


Staying Alive

by toyhto



Series: Staying Alive [1]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Fix-It, M/M, Romance, Season/Series 04 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-02-24 03:59:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13205445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: Thomas Shelby and Alfie Solomons in the beach. And afterwards.





	1. Staying Alive

**Author's Note:**

> So, this story is a Fix-It AU happening during the season 4 finale episode. **There're spoilers, beware.** As before, I don't know how gangsters in 1920's speak and I know nothing about English dialects so I'm not going to even try with those.
> 
> Also, this was supposed to be one chapter only, but I ended up writing four chapters in total - you could still read the first chapter as a one shot if you want to. Other chapters are like tiny little sequels that came out because I kept having new ideas about how things are going to turn out for these two absolutely awful and lovely characters. But I'm also pretty optimistic that the whole thing is a story itself, even if I did't plan it to go for so long when I began writing it.

So it’s all nice. The wind is nice. The sand is nice. The sun is shining. The sea is just perfect. And Alfie fucking Solomons goes on and on about fucking _cancer._  
  
He can’t shoot a man who’s talking about cancer, can he? Surely he can’t shoot a man who won’t _shut up._ So he keeps calling Alfie’s name but that doesn’t make a difference. Maybe Alfie is afraid. That would explain the talking. And he gets it. He was afraid in those fucking fields years ago when he thought Campbell’s men were going to shoot him. But Alfie should’ve fucking thought that before he brought those bastards to the fucking boxing match. _Fuck._  
  
“Alfie,” he calls, one last time, then he’s going to shoot. “Alfie, just fucking stop. I’m going to kill you now.”  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says and drops his gaze to his knees, and _bloody hell_ that’s unnerving, “yeah, I know. I’m so sorry.”  
  
“What?” he says and lowers his gun, just for a second. But when he blinks, Alfie has pulled a gun as well.  
  
Fuck.  
  
He should’ve done it when he had a chance.  
  
He’s going to do it anyway. Yeah, he likes Alfie Solomons. Yeah, he’s done stupid things himself. Cruel things, if you want to put it like that. He’s crossed so many fucking lines that he has no idea where they were in the first place. And his business is fine now. His family is safe. But there are _rules._ He’s going to kill Alfie Solomons. Even if Alfie kills him as well. And he’s pretty sure he’s faster. Alfie looks sick. Must be the cancer or the fear.  
  
“I’m just going to say one more thing,” Alfie says at the _fucking second_ when Tommy’s going to pull the trigger. “I know you have a good chance here. Your fingers surely are quicker than mine. But I’ve got a proposition for you, mate.”  
  
_A proposition._ A fucking proposition.  
  
“Alfie,” he says. It’s meant to be a warning but the fucking bastard _smiles_ at him.  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says, lowering his gun just a bit, “don’t kill me and I’ll fuck you.”  
  
“ _What?_ ”  
  
“I think you know what that is,” Alfie says, and Tommy opens his mouth to say that he’s done with this bullshit, but all that he gets out is _fuck_ because Alfie drops his gun onto the sand. Just fucking lets go of it. Like it’s something to be dropped around, a fucking _loaded gun._ Tommy blinks and blinks and suddenly he’s got a bloody headache. This has been going on for far too long. One last thing before he takes a few weeks off, that’s what he said to himself. But Alfie’s still alive and Alfie’s gun is in the sand and if he sees right, Alfie’s smile isn’t as obnoxious as usually. Or perhaps the sun is playing tricks with his eyes.  
  
“Alfie,” he says and lowers his gun a little bit, because it just seems rude to point it at a man’s face without pulling the trigger. “What the hell did you say?”  
  
“You seem stressed,” Alfie says, the bastard, “and I don’t blame you, all this nasty business. Killing me included. So if you don’t shoot my face off, I promise I’ll take you to my place. Yours, if you insist. But I have a nice bed. Very good for my back. And I’m going to fuck you there.”  
  
“You’re going to fuck me.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Alfie says, kicking the gun that’s still lying in the sand. “Just the way you want. But I don’t do any tricks. And you know my back isn’t too good, so keep that in mind when you plan it.”  
  
He takes a few deep breaths. The sun is still shining. He really, really wants to go home and forget about this bloody business. But he can’t leave Alfie Solomons wandering in the beach, can he?  
  
“Just the way I want?”  
  
“I suppose,” Alfie says slowly and turns to him, both hands raised up, palms facing him, “I _suppose_ that you like it a bit rough. I can do that. All those women you’ve fucked, I bet my ass off that you were nice and sweet with them. But with me, you don’t need to. I can hold you. I know you’re quicker than me but think about it, all the doors locked, just you and me in. I could hold you.”  
  
“Alfie,” he says, “we aren’t going to fuck.”  
  
“Pity,” Alfie says, “but your loss. You’re going to have to shoot me then.”  
  
He sighs. “What?”  
  
“It was your prize,” Alfie says, “the fucking, for not killing me. If we aren’t going to fuck, then fucking shoot me.”  
  
He stares at Alfie. The bastard is playing a game with him, surely he is. But he’s the one still holding the gun. He lowers it and puts it into his pocket. It feels heavy resting against his chest. All the fucking bullets are still in.  
  
“I’m not going to fucking shoot you,” he says, “you bastard.”  
  
“ _Bastard_ ,” Alfie says, “who’re you calling a _bastard?_ And you said you aren’t going to fuck me either.”  
  
“I thought you’re the one who’s going to do the fucking,” he says and bits his lip. He should just shut up and go home. But he’s too tired and Alfie Solomons is now taking small wavering steps towards him, hands still raised, the gun in the sand.  
  
“Sorry, Tommy. It’s just how I usually do it. But I told you, you can tell me what you want. And I’ll try. Just think about my back and my –“  
  
“ _Fuck_ you back, Alfie. Just fucking –“  
  
“Too bad,” Alfie says. He’s almost reached Tommy now. If he wasn’t this fucking tired, he’d turn right now and walk away. “I’ve never fucked anyone who’s as pretty as you.”  
  
Oh, fucking -  
  
“You aren’t?”  
  
“Never,” Alfie says, stopping a few feet away from him.  
  
“You poor bastard.”  
  
“No, no, not at all,” Alfie says, and the smile is on again, the fucking smile that makes Tommy want to grab the man’s coat and - - and he’s too tired to think about the rest. “You’re just extraordinary, Tommy. I suppose you look yourself in the mirror when you’re wanking.”  
  
He actually laughs at that. “What?”  
  
“Those eyes,” Alfie says, “if I had those eyes I’d do it too. I’d stand in front of the mirror with my cock in my hand and look at my pretty eyes.”  
  
“I don’t do that,” he says and realises right away that it’s a mistake. He shouldn’t be fucking talking about this.  
  
“We could do it in front of the mirror,” Alfie says, “for a moment at least, I suppose my knee won’t take that for too long. But you could have a good look at yourself. In the mirror. Me holding your cock.”  
  
“Getting fucked,” he says almost soundlessly but of course Alfie hears him.  
  
“Yeah. I’m glad you like the idea.”  
  
“I don’t -,” he begins, but then the dog barks. _Fucking hell._ He turns and starts walking. After some twenty steps he glances over his shoulder. Alfie Solomons is standing there, not reaching for his gun, also not following Tommy. “Are you fucking coming or not?”  
  
“Remember my fucking knee, mate,” Alfie says and starts walking.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“So you decided that it’s going to be my place, then.”  
  
He glances at Alfie. “I’m just taking you home.”  
  
“And why the hell would you do that? I came by car.”  
  
“So you didn’t believe I’d kill you.”  
  
“If I’m going to get killed somewhere,” Alfie says and leans against the seat, “don’t think that I’m going to fucking walk there.”  
  
“I wasn’t – shut up.”  
  
“You’re the one talking.”  
  
He rubs his forehead. The sun is still shining. There’s this pain behind his eyes, not too bad but it doesn’t go away. “Arthur told me to take a few days off.”  
  
“You should take a fucking year off after that bullshit.”  
  
“You really dying?”  
  
He thinks Alfie looks at him. But he keeps his eyes on the road. And he shouldn’t have asked anyway. “Yeah. Slowly.”  
  
“Is it going to be easy enough or –“  
  
“No,” Alfie says, “no, it’s not. So, too bad you couldn’t resist my offer back there. It’d have been neat. Getting shot by Thomas Shelby.”  
  
“But you don’t really want to die.”  
  
“Who the hell wants to die.”  
  
“I did,” he says, “sometimes. After France. At night.”  
  
“It doesn’t count if it’s at night,” Alfie says, “we want all kind of stupid things at night. But anyway, I’m glad this turned out the way it did. Or I realise you can still kill me. Go ahead. But then we’ll never have sex.”  
  
“We aren’t going to have sex.”  
  
“When that Italian guy in his posh suit came to talk to me,” Alfie says, “you know what I was thinking about? I was thinking about how you’d shoot me in the face. And how’d it be too bad, because you and me, we’ve done business for a long time. To be completely honest, I would’ve preferred someone else to shoot me. Unless it was by your orders, of course. Because then it’d have been just fucking rude.”  
  
“I’m not going to shoot you in the face.”  
  
“Yeah. I should’ve told the Italian guy to fuck off. I kind of tried. But the offer was good. He was desperate. So it would’ve seemed a bit… sentimental not to take it.”  
  
“I get it, Alfie.”  
  
“I’m sorry anyway,” Alfie says and the dog barks a couple of times in the back seat.  
  
“So you’ve never fucked a woman,” Tommy says, just to fucking talk about something else already.  
  
“And whatever gave you that idea?”  
  
“You said I’m the prettiest,” he says and clears his throat, “that I’d be the prettiest.”  
  
“I don’t like women.”  
  
“You don’t like women.”  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says, “no. Absolutely not. I like them as people. Unlike most men, I suppose. But I don’t want to fuck them. I told you I’m a sodomite.”  
  
“No one says a thing like that.”  
  
“So what do they do? Grab your ass in an alley?”  
  
“A long time ago,” he says, “yeah. Maybe.”  
  
“And you’d go along.”  
  
“Once or twice. In France. But it was different there.”  
  
“I’m afraid I might’ve bragged a little,” Alfie says, “just to keep you from shooting me. My knee really doesn’t work too well with fucking. We’re probably going to have to do it in bed.”  
  
“You aren’t going to fuck me, Alfie.”  
  
“So you keep saying. Why’re you frowning like that? Headache?”  
  
He nods. “Can you give me a cigarette?”  
  
“I don’t fucking smoke, mate.”  
  
“From my pocket. I have them in my front pocket.”  
  
“Don’t you think I’m going to pull out your gun and shoot you?”  
  
“I have a headache. Give me a fucking cigarette, Alfie.”  
  
“Very well,” Alfie says, and then Alfie’s fingers are going through his front pocket. It takes awfully long. He holds his breath, and finally Alfie lights up a cigarette and puts it to his mouth.  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
“Pretty mouth,” Alfie says. “I’m afraid I don’t have much food in the house. I thought I was going to die. So we’ll have to get some.”  
  
“I’m not staying, Alfie.”  
  
“We can go out to eat if you want to. Or I can have someone bring something over. But you know, I’m not sure if you want to be seen in my bedroom yet.”  
  
Fuck. He keeps his mouth shut because surely that’s the best way to deal with Alfie Solomons. It actually works for perhaps five minutes.  
  
  
**  
  
  
He pulls the car over in front of what Alfie claims is his house. It looks like an ordinary house. There’re curtains in the windows. And it’s not big. A nice change for his place. He glances at Alfie who’s climbing out of the car. He’s going to drive home and fucking forget about all this, only Alfie is now holding the door open and watching him.  
  
“Alfie.”  
  
“One good fuck, Tommy,” Alfie says, “two if you have any luck. And if we take a proper break in between.”  
  
“We aren’t going to fuck, Alfie,” he says and gets out of the car. He’s too tired for this shit. But it’s been a long day. It wouldn’t hurt to stay for a few minutes before he drives back to Birmingham. So he follows Alfie to the house and sits down in an armchair in what seems like a perfectly ordinary living room. Maybe he kind of thought that Alfie Solomons lives in his bakery. But no. And the dog jumps onto the chair beside him and sits down.  
  
“I have tea,” Alfie says from the kitchen. “Nothing else. I’ve got to call Ollie. He’ll be quick when he hears that you’re here.”  
  
“ _Alfie_ ,” he says but he’s kind of given up already. So what if he stays for half an hour. He listens to Alfie talking to Ollie in the phone, _yeah, Ollie, I’m alive, he didn’t shoot me, he’s here, can you bring us some food? Who? Thomas fucking Shelby of course, who else? Yeah, I’m alive. Ollie, just get me some food, I’m hungry.  
  
_ “Kids,” Alfie says when he comes back to the living room and walks to the chair that has the dog on it. “Listen, buddy, you’ve got to sit somewhere else. He’s my guest.”  
  
The dog jumps off the chair but stays in the room.  
  
“I almost couldn’t make him believe that you’re here,” Alfie says, “Ollie, I mean. I know that you’re a lot younger than me and a lot prettier but really, the kid works for me. Surely he should have a bit more faith in my abilities to charm a man.”  
  
“I’m not that much younger,” Tommy says and lights up a cigarette.  
  
“Maybe not,” Alfie says, “but so much prettier. So, last time you let someone fuck you. Was it good?”  
  
Tommy closes his eyes for a second. The headache is slowly fading away. Maybe it was all the driving around that did that to him. His eyes haven’t been the same after the fucking incident with the priest in, what’s it been? Over a year ago. “Yeah.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“It was in France.”  
  
“But it was good.”  
  
“Yeah, compared to everything else that was going on.”  
  
“I’ll make it better for you.”  
  
He takes a deep breath and stares at Alfie. The man stares back at him. Fucking frustrating. “Alfie, why do you want to fuck me?”  
  
“Why do I want to fuck you.”  
  
“Yeah. Why?”  
  
“Isn’t that kind of obvious?” Alfie says and frowns at him as if it’s him who doesn’t get this.  
  
“No,” he says, “not really.”  
  
“Thomas Shelby,” Alfie says and licks his lower lip, and Tommy grins even if that’s exactly what Alfie was going for with the fucking gesture, _shit._ But he can’t help it. This is _ridiculous._ “Thomas fucking Shelby.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s my name. So, go on. Why?”  
  
“Obviously,” Alfie says and rubs his beard, “I like you.”  
  
“You like me.”  
  
“You didn’t shoot me in the beach even though you should have.”  
  
“Yeah, sometimes I make mistakes. Alfie, be serious.”  
  
“But I am. I’m a serious man.”  
  
“You really aren’t.”  
  
“I like your face,” Alfie says, tilting his head to the right and watching him, really _watching_ him and it’s fucking unnerving but also kind of nice. Usually people are too afraid to do that. Everyone who’s not kin. And sometimes them, too. “It’s a pretty face. And your eyes. The first time we met, I had a gun pressed against your face and your nose was fucking bleeding and you didn’t fucking _blink._ ”  
  
“I blinked.”  
  
“Who the fuck remembers what happened. It’s been years.”  
  
“Stop talking about my pretty face.”  
  
“You asked me why. I like your face. I want to hold it, you know, hold your jaw. Tight enough that you can’t talk nonsense to me.”  
  
“Very romantic.”  
  
“Can you handle romantic?” Alfie asks. “Because I bet you can’t. It terrifies you. So what I’d do is that I’d hold you tight enough for you to imagine that you couldn’t get away, and then when we’d do it, it’d be easier for you. Because you wouldn’t have to care. And you wouldn’t have to _do_ anything. Unless my knee –“  
  
He gets up. _Fuck._ He should go right now. His trousers are getting uncomfortably tight and he’s not going to, he’s _not_ going to do it. He takes a step towards the door and then there’s a knock.  
  
“It must be Ollie,” Alfie says. “What an excellent timing.”  
  
“ _Shit._ ”  
  
“Try not to scare the poor lad,” Alfie says and walks past him with his stick. He follows. It really is Ollie, standing in the doorway looking both terrified and absolutely confused. Tommy kind of understands the feeling. Ollie passes Alfie a brown paper bag and Alfie says thank you and closes the door.  
  
“Sandwiches. Great.”  
  
“I should go.”  
  
“I know you’re hard,” Alfie says and nods in the general direction of Tommy’s waist. “so cut the crap and take a sandwich. And you know I’m not going to make you do anything, don’t you? And not only because you’re the one who has a gun.”  
  
“Because you like me.”  
  
“I’m just happy to be alive,” Alfie says and passes him a sandwich on a brown plate. He takes it. “And some tea. I suppose you’ve brought your own booze.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“That’s good. I don’t have that stuff in the house. Now eat and then tell me what you want me to do to you.”  
  
Nothing, he thinks. Absolutely nothing. But they go back to the living room and he eats the sandwich and it makes him feel considerably better. He thought he’d have to fucking kill Alfie Solomons today. What a crappy day. So all in all, this is better, sitting in Alfie’s living room with the man, talking about fucking. But after Alfie finishes his sandwich, he doesn’t mention fucking anymore. No, he talks about the house. The dog. The furniture. The smog that’s been getting worse lately. The fucking _weather._ And Tommy drinks his tea and smokes a cigarette and thinks about leaving but doesn’t actually leave.  
  
“So,” he says finally, “bedroom?”  
  
Alfie flinches. “Fucking hell, man. That wasn’t subtle. I was drinking _tea._ ”  
  
He stares at Alfie. And stares. And how the fuck it’s even possible for the man to be so fucking - - but then Alfie smiles at him, a crooked smile that almost makes him nervous and _fuck_ that feels good.  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says and stands up, “bedroom.”  
  
“Do you have something? Oil?”  
  
“Just come on.”  
  
“Alfie.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Alfie says, already standing in the doorway, glancing at him over his shoulder. “I have oil. It’s going to be better than in France.”  
  
“I wasn’t –“  
  
“Worried. I know. But just so that you know, you’re going to like it.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
So.  
  
_So._  
  
He likes it.  
  
He fucking _likes_ it.  
  
It turns out that Alfie’s knee actually is quite useless, though. At first it’s not too bad. He takes his clothes off because he surely isn’t going to let Alfie Solomons fucking undress him, and Alfie just watches, sometimes clearing his throat as if the man’s not sure what to say here. So he ends up telling Alfie Solomons to fucking take his pants off already. And he puts on his coldest stare, which seems to help them both. And then Alfie Solomons pushes him towards the bed but almost gently, and he has to tell Alfie to fucking stop worrying about him. He’s not going to break. He’s _Thomas Shelby._ And Alfie swallows and then wraps his fingers around Tommy, and he pushes his foot against Alfie’s thigh and the back of his head against the pillow and tries not to think about the rest of it, the beach, the sun.  
  
_Rough._ Alfie told him he’d like it rough. But it’s not very rough. And maybe the day’s been too long because he doesn’t mind. It’s enough that Alfie tells him what to do. For once in his life he doesn’t have to figure it out himself. And oil is good. Oil makes it a lot easier than in France, and easier in a good way, because this is Alfie Solomons here with him and then, when he already has Alfie inside him, the bastard starts talking about all kind of nonsense. How pretty his face is. How fucking mad he is. How he’s going to get himself killed one day. How his eyes could stop the train. He tells Alfie to shut up and then Alfie has his fingers on his throat, but gently, almost like stroking but with a threat, and it’s so good that he lets Alfie keep talking. And then Alfie’s knee cracks and Alfie swears and pulls out of him, and he has to turn so that he’s on his knees on the bed, face pushed against the mattress, which is good because now he has to think even less. It’s just sex. But it’s good.  
  
It’s good.  
  
It’s _good.  
  
_ Alfie comes, still inside of him, and then finishes him with a few strokes. He falls onto the mattress. Alfie lays down beside him, breathing hard, rubbing his beard with both hands, and then a few seconds later one of Alfie’s hands reaches for Tommy’s shoulder.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Shut up,” Alfie says. “You were so pretty.”  
  
“You didn’t even see my face.”  
  
“I did at first. Shut up, Tommy.”  
  
“Don’t tell me you want to kiss me.”  
  
Alfie closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. _Fuck._  
  
“You want to kiss me.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Alfie says quietly. It’s difficult to remember that he almost killed the man today.  
  
“You want to fucking kiss me,” he says and rolls onto his side. “So, come on then.”  
  
“What?” Alfie says, glancing at him. “No.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You don’t mean it. You’re going to shoot me after all. No one gets to kiss Thomas Shelby.”  
  
“I’m not going to shoot you.”  
  
“So you say,” Alfie says, “now.”  
  
“Alfie.”  
  
“Fucking hell,” Alfie says and pushes his elbow into the mattress, places his other hand on Tommy’s neck and pulls him closer. And kisses him.  
  
There’s just too much beard.  
  
“That was weird,” he says.  
  
“I’m going to sleep for a few minutes,” Alfie says and turns to face the wall. “Don’t talk to me.”  
  
So he lays there, awake, thoroughly fucked but in a good way at once, watching the ceiling. Alfie sleeps for fucking half an hour but it’s kind of nice to listen to the man breathing.  
  
  
**  
  
  
In the evening he pulls on his clothes, checks that he still has his gun, and leaves. Alfie follows him to the front door and then just stands there, and he stands there as well, because they _fucked._ Surely one of them should say something. It’s just that he’s always been crap at this. But finally Alfie rubs his beard.  
  
“This thing,” Alfie says, not really looking at him, “you realise it isn’t one time only.”  
  
“What,” he says even though he knows.  
  
“As long as you don’t shoot me, you can come over.”  
  
“To fuck.”  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says. “Or for breakfast. Whatever you can think off.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Really.”  
  
Oh, shit. “I’m going to take some time off. From business.”  
  
“So you could come to London for a few days,” Alfie says, “to enjoy the… culture.”  
  
“Culture.”  
  
“Yeah. Like, if you only happened to know someone who likes your pretty face. And who would make you breakfast if you stayed ‘till the morning.”  
  
“’Till the morning? Really?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
So Alfie Solomons really likes him. It’s not just about his face. Or about staying alive. “Alfie, I have to go.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah.”  
  
“But I could come to London for a few days.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
“To see you.”  
  
“Oh, fucking hell,” Alfie says, leans closer and kisses him on the mouth. He kisses back and then he pushes Alfie on the shoulder.  
  
“Too much beard.”  
  
“I know,” Alfie says. “Fuck off already or I’m going to do that again.”  
  
“See you later,” Tommy says and walks out of the door.  
  
 It’s oddly quiet inside his head all the way back to Birmingham.


	2. Still Staying Alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Take a few weeks off, Arthur said, well he didn’t bloody hell mean that Tommy would go to a fucking date with Alfie Solomons._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It turns out that I wrote another chapter to this story. Also, I'm not exactly completely certain that I won't write more. But we'll see.

So, about the beard.  
  
He pours himself another glass of whiskey. About the beard. He doesn’t like the beard. The kiss otherwise? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s impossible to imagine Alfie Solomons without the beard, so if he’s going to kiss the man, with the beard it is. He could deal with the beard.  
  
What the fuck is he thinking about anyway? He’s not going to kiss Alfie Solomons again.  
  
But he liked it.  
  
_Bloody hell._ He liked the _sex._ That’s what he liked. And it’s not personal. It’s just that Alfie Solomons is apparently really good at reading him. The way Alfie held his throat yesterday, not tight enough to keep him from breathing, but tight enough to suggest that he would, he would if Tommy didn’t let him do what he wants. Tight enough to let Tommy not to think about anything for once. And the fucking suggestion in the first place. He was pointing his gun at Alfie’s head, ready to fucking shoot the man, and then the bastard had the nerve to say that if he didn’t, Alfie would fuck him. Who the fuck says a thing like that.  
  
He probably shouldn’t have agreed. He agreed with Alfie Solomons and isn’t that one of the stupidest things he’s ever done in his whole fucking life. But sometimes he’s just kind of tired of killing people, especially ones he likes. Only he doesn’t _like_ Alfie Solomons, it’s just mutual admiration.  
  
_Fuck that._ He likes Alfie Solomons. But it’s not personal. It’s just -  
  
Someone knocks on the door. He closes his eyes for a second. “Not now.”  
  
“I’m coming in,” Ada calls through the door, “in five seconds. One…”  
  
He grabs the glass of whiskey. He should look like he’s doing something sensible in here. Then Ada opens the door and frowns at him.  
  
“What’re you doing?”  
  
He nods towards the glass. Ada sighs, walks closer to him and sits down in the armchair. He stares at her. She stares at him. “Well,” he says finally, “what’s this about?”  
  
“Nothing,” Ada says. “I thought you were going to take some time off.”  
  
“I _am_ taking some time off.”  
  
“You’re sitting in your office, drinking whiskey. It’s ten o’clock in the morning. You could, you know, _do_ something.”  
  
“Surely that’s not why you came here.”  
  
“No,” Ada says and pours herself whiskey as well. “Listen. Maybe you should go somewhere for a few days. Maybe to Wales. Take Charlie with you. You look like you haven’t slept in a week and you’re supposed to be on a holiday. So, give yourself a break for once.”  
  
“Ada, just tell me why you’re here.”  
  
“Arthur told me you went to… take care of something yesterday,” Ada says, glancing at him over her glass of whiskey. “Someone. So, I don’t understand why the fuck you would let something like that upset you this time.”  
  
“I didn’t kill him,” he says and then bits his lip.  
  
Ada blinks. “You didn’t kill him?”  
  
“Just tell me why you’re here,” he says, shit, he’s not going to talk about Alfie Solomons with his sister. Definitely not. “But no, I didn’t kill him.”  
  
“So that’s what’s upset you,” Ada says and laughs shortly, in an actually amused tone. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”  
  
“I’m not upset because I didn’t kill him,” he says.  
  
“So you _are_ upset.”  
  
“No,” he says, “ _no._ Ada, I’ll give you whatever you came here to ask, just please fuck off –“  
  
“Okay,” Ada says, not looking _at all_ like she’s going to leave soon, “tell me. Why didn’t you kill him?”  
  
He just stares at her.  
  
“What did you get from it?” Ada says, leaning closer. “Money?”  
  
“It wasn’t about business,” he says and then takes a deep breath. _Fucking hell._ But he really didn’t sleep that much last night. And Ada’s not here to hear about him going on and on about Alfie Solomons, and anyway he’s not going to say a fucking word about what they did yesterday. But Ada’s just watching him and it’s been ages since he’s been able to just sit down for a while, and now his head is full of memories about Alfie Solomons’ beard rubbing against his chin -  
  
“Not about business?” Ada asks and smiles a little. “So, you like the man.”  
  
“I don’t like him,” he says and shakes his head, “it’s just…” _sex.  
  
_ “Fuck,” Ada says slowly, “you really like him. Who’s it? Or should I ask Arthur?”  
  
Tommy takes a deep breath. “Tell me what you want and then go. And don’t say a word to Arthur.”  
  
“Oh,” Ada says, “ _oh_ ,” and it’s _infuriating_ but also he’s tired. And he’s been kind of thinking about whether he should go back to London. All morning he’s been thinking about that. “Tommy, you _like_ him.”  
  
“Yeah,” he says and pours himself more whiskey, “I like him.”  
  
“Fucking hell.”  
  
“Don’t tell anyone.”  
  
“Oh my God,” Ada says, staring at him. “ _Tommy._ ”  
  
“So, anyway,” he says, and there’s this distant pain lingering somewhere behind his eyes so he lights up a cigarette, “you want something. Tell me what it is.”  
  
“Yeah,” Ada says, pulling her shoulders back and blinking. “I want you to quit seeing Jessie Eden.”  
  
What? “What?”  
  
“I ran into her yesterday,” Ada says, holding her glass of whiskey, not looking at him. This is weird.  
  
“Where?”  
  
Ada glances at him and then flinches. “In a meeting.”  
  
“In a meeting.”  
  
“It’s been a long time,” Ada says, “and it’s just… I don’t know, Tommy. I just wanted to go there. But she came to talk to me. You slept with her.”  
  
“Of course I slept with her.”  
  
“Don’t do that anymore,” Ada says, “let her be. And don’t drag her into whatever you’re planning.”  
  
“Why the hell not?” he asks. This is surely better than talking about Alfie, even if he’s not exactly sure what they’re talking about.  
  
“’Cause I like her,” Ada says and rubs her forehead with her fingers, so he can barely see her eyes.  
  
He blinks. “What?”  
  
“I like her,” Ada says and meets his eyes. She looks as determinant as ever. “So don’t fuck her. And don’t fuck with her.”  
  
“Ada,” he says slowly.  
  
“And if you ever, _ever_ use this against me,” Ada says and stands up, “I’m going to fucking leave and never come back.”  
  
“Just sit down.”  
  
Ada stares at him. He nods towards the chair. Of course Ada doesn’t sit down. Fine, then.  
  
“She’s important,” he says, “for the business.”  
  
“Not anymore,” Ada says.  
  
“But do you even,” he begins and then clears his throat, “do you know if she likes you back?”  
  
“Of course I don’t fucking know that,” Ada says, her eyes fixed on him, “but I’d like to find out. I hope… I have this feeling that maybe she…”  
  
“She liked me alright,” he says even though it’s surely a mistake and he knows it. Ada looks like he’s hit her and _fucking hell_ , he can take care of his family when it comes to money and bailing them out of prison, but he can’t talk about fucking _feelings._ “Ada, I’m sorry.”  
  
“Whatever fuck for,” Ada says. She sounds sad.  
  
“I like Alfie Solomons,” he says and then grabs his glass of whiskey a bit tighter.  
  
Ada stares at him.  
  
“Alfie Solomons,” he says after a few blank seconds, “I like him.”  
  
“Sure,” Ada says.  
  
“We fucked,” he says.  
  
Ada’s eyebrows raise and then she sits down slowly as if she thinks she might miss the chair. “You…”  
  
“Yeah,” he says. “Since we’re talking about things like that.”  
  
And then Ada starts laughing. He realises that he has a smoking cigarette still hanging from his mouth. Fucking hell. He should tell Alfie about this, how his sister is laughing at the thought of him and… but of course he’s not going to tell Alfie about this, because from now on Alfie Solomons and him are going to meet each other only for business.  
  
The hell they are.  
  
“That’s why you look like you haven’t slept in days,” Ada says finally, the corners of her mouth still twisting upwards, “you can’t stop thinking about him.”  
  
“But I can’t…” he says and clears his throat, and Ada’s watching him in a way that’s weirdly soft, and it’s not completely uncomfortable but fucking close. “I can’t see him again, can I?  
  
“Are you asking me?” Ada says and blinks. “Are you actually _asking me_ what you should do?”  
  
He drinks some of his whiskey.  
  
“So,” Ada says, smiling broadly even if it looks like she’s trying to hold it back a little, “let’s see. Does he like you?”  
  
“I think so,” he says. His voice is pretty dry. Could be because of all the smoking. He lights up another cigarette.  
  
“And what makes you think so, exactly?”  
  
“He kissed me,” he says and then swallows, because Ada’s looking absolutely delighted and it’s fucking terrifying. But he really needs to talk about this because there’s no fucking way he’s going to figure it out on his own. “And I didn’t ask him to. So doesn’t that mean that he likes me?”  
  
“Yeah,” Ada says surprisingly softly, “yeah, I think it does. Oh, _Tommy._ ”  
  
“Stop that.”  
  
“Stop what?”  
  
“Stop looking so… happy.”  
  
“I’m not looking _happy,”_ Ada says, looking terribly happy. “When’re you going to see him again?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
Ada cocks an eyebrow at him.  
  
“He kind of invited me to come over,” he says and Ada fucking _sighs_ but he can’t seem to make himself stop anymore. Maybe it’s because of the fucking _taking a few days off_ Arthur pushed at him. “And I kind of told him I’d go.”  
  
“When?” Ada asks, biting her lower lip.  
  
“What do you mean, when?”  
  
“What do you think I fucking mean, you idiot? Why aren’t you already on your way?”  
  
“I just saw him yesterday,” he says and clears his throat,” I couldn’t… I shouldn’t…”  
  
“Thomas Shelby,” Ada says and stands up, “get your things and say goodbye to your boy and to your horses and whomever you need to and fucking drive to London and tell your man you like him. Because I bet you didn’t. I bet you just stared at him coolly and left.”  
  
That’s just crazy. He shouldn’t listen to Ada. He shouldn’t have talked to Ada at the first place. And he should tell Ada that Jessie Eden is important for the business and that even if Ada likes the woman, that doesn’t _change_ anything, because business… but he can’t fucking stop thinking about that kiss. And Alfie’s beard. That rubbed his face. Inconveniently. He’s probably never going to learn to _like_ the beard. And then he realises that he’s stood up and also apparently he has taken a few steps towards the door already, and Ada’s smiling at him. He can’t remember the last time Ada looked this happy. He’s really glad. It’s making him nervous.  
  
“And remember,” Ada tells him, as she pushes him through his own fucking door, “Jessie Eden is mine.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
So that is why Tommy Shelby is now driving to London. To see Alfie Solomons. But not for business. He closes his eyes for a second but he’s driving so he can’t really do that, and then he blinks and tries to concentrate. It’s not that big of a deal. He’s had… girlfriends. It’s not that different.  
  
Fuck. He hasn’t had girlfriends, not since France and sometimes it’s like the time before didn’t exist. He’s fucked women and some women he’s fucked regularly and he’s cared for some of them. He obviously cares about Lizzie. And he cared about May. And there was Grace, but it does nothing good to think about _Grace._ Grace is different from _everything._ Sometimes he thinks that Grace didn’t exist, either. It’s like all his memories about her are blurred, like a dream that was just a bit too good. He shouldn’t have let himself believe it wasn’t a dream. But now it’s fucking too late and he shouldn’t think about that, he should think about that yes, he’s fucked people before and it doesn’t fucking change a thing that now he’s fucking Alfie Solomons.  
  
Oh fucking hell. He squeezes the wheel more tightly. It’s raining a little, so at least he doesn’t have to stand the fucking sunshine among other things. He tried to sleep last night, he really tried, it was only that every bloody time his thoughts began to drift, they went back to Alfie Solomons holding his cock.  
  
Sometime after four he went to the kitchen. The maids looked terrified when he tried to ask them if there was anything to eat. And he didn’t even remember their names. _Fuck_ his life’s gone weird.  
  
He’s in London sometime in the afternoon even though he drove pretty slowly like some fucking idiot who doesn’t have the guts to do what he came here to do. He clears his throat a few times and presses his thumb against his forehead. Alfie’s probably going to fucking laugh at him. Alfie’s going to laugh his ass off at Tommy Shelby who came here like some love-sick teenage boy. But what the fuck he can do about it now. He’s already here. He’s a few blocks away from Alfie’s house and he’s pretty sure that if he turns now and goes home, someone’s going to tell Alfie anyway. Alfie’s going to laugh. And he’s not going to find out what’d have happened.  
  
He’s not a coward. Whatever fuck he is, he’s not that. Mad, maybe, but not someone who bails. So he drives to Alfie’s house, pulls the car over and then takes a few deep breaths. Alfie’s probably not at home. Of course Alfie isn’t at home. In the middle of the day, of course not. He must have been thinking with his cock when he thought Alfie’d be here. Fucking hell. But because Alfie’s not home, it doesn’t hurt to knock on the door. And he can’t really start the engine and drive away now that he’s already here, not without knocking on the door.  
  
He gets out of the car. His legs feel weirdly heavy. He’s probably not dealing with this holiday thing too well. He should just get back to taking care of his business and -  
  
He knocks on the door.  
  
After a few seconds he realises he’s holding his breath and lights up a cigarette, and that’s pretty much when someone unlocks the door on the other side. He swallows. It’s probably the house keeper. A servant. A maid. A -  
  
It’s Alfie.  
  
“Oh bloody hell,” Alfie says but not unhappily, and then the man steps aside from the door.  
  
Tommy stands still for a heartbeat or two but he can’t fucking turn now, so he walks in.  
  
  
**  
  
  
He’s sitting in the same armchair than yesterday, no idea if he did it on purpose or not. Alfie’s sitting in the same armchair than yesterday as well. They’ve eaten and then he’s drunk some booze from his flask even if he told himself not to. It’s just the way Alfie’s watching him, almost as if the man’s imagining him naked.  
  
“I’m imagining you naked,” Alfie says, frowns at him, and then takes his cup of tea and takes a sip. “So, how were things at home?”  
  
“What?” he says. His voice sounds thin. He tries to fix it with a cold stare.  
  
“Home,” Alfie says, “you know. Your house. In Birmingham.”  
  
He swallows.  
  
“Where you live,” Alfie says and leans closer, rubbing his beard.  
  
“Fuck you,” he says.  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Alfie says, “fuck me. But I thought we’d talk at first a little bit. Because you know, I told you to come for a little holiday in London. But I had my doubts. And now there you are, Tommy Shelby, in my living room. You look terrified.”  
  
“I’m not fucking –“  
  
“Yeah, you are,” Alfie says. “And me, too. You just can’t see it because the beard hides it pretty well.”  
  
“Don’t fuck with me, Alfie,” he says and tries to do it as calmly as he can but he has a feeling that he’s not very intimidating. And he bloody well knows why. Yesterday he promised to fucking shoot Alfie and then he let the man fuck him instead. So how the hell he is going to handle this now.  
  
“No, no,” Alfie says now, “I’m just glad. I’m fucking glad but it’s just difficult for me to express that, you know, because I’m an old bastard. But don’t think for a second that I’m not glad. Do you want to go somewhere?”  
  
“Go where?”  
  
“I don’t know. You live in a fucking castle. I don’t know what you people do for fun.”  
  
“I don’t –“  
  
“You come to my house,” Alfie says, “looking at me like you want me to kiss you, fucking _hell_ , with your pretty blue eyes and your nice chin and your posh mouth and your fucking _neck._ And your suit. And that stare. You wish you wished that you’d killed me but you don’t. Because you want me to fuck you again.”  
  
He tries to find something to say, anything. Surely he was better at this yesterday, which is pretty bad because then he failed to kill the man. “What about my neck?”  
  
“You’re vain,” Alfie says and takes a sip of his tea, “I love it. I fucking love it. I’m going to talk about your pretty face for hours and you’re going to be furious but also so bloody hard from just listening to me talking about you.”  
  
“I don’t –“  
  
“Let’s go out,” Alfie says and stands up with a sigh. “I know a few places where normal people go. Art galleries. Maybe a museum.”  
  
What the - - “Normal people go for what?”  
  
“For a date, of course,” Alfie says, already walking towards the door with his cane.  
  
“A _date?_ ”  
  
“It’s like, you know, two people who like each other,” Alfie says, “going to a nice place together. And later we fuck.”  
  
_Bloody hell,_ he thinks but stands up anyway and follows Alfie.  
  
  
**  
  
  
They argue about where they’re going to go and for a moment Tommy thinks that Alfie’s going to pull the gun, or probably that he is. But neither of them do, he just grabs Alfie’s collar and kinds of tries to lift the man up which doesn’t really work out, and Alfie slaps him on the side of his face but kind of lazily, which is good because Alfie has rings. Tommy rubs his cheek anyway and Alfie pats him on the shoulder and then brushes his thumb against his neck. It feels oddly personal. He stares at Alfie but lets go of the man’s coat, and after a few seconds Alfie steps back and they agree on the art museum. It sounds fancy enough. And no one’s going to know who they are.  
  
It’s so fucking weird that sometimes he thinks he’s going to laugh. Him and Alfie Solomons, standing side by side, watching a painting that’s actually nice. It’s not really a _date_ , though, is it? Alfie was just taking the piss. But he doesn’t say a word about that because Alfie’s throwing these looks at him, like he’s the best thing in the whole fucking place, which is of course crazy but feels good. _Fuck_ it feels good. Maybe he’s losing his mind. _Take a few weeks off_ , Arthur said, well he didn’t bloody hell mean that Tommy would go to a fucking date with Alfie Solomons. But then Alfie asks him what he thinks about the painting with the black cat, and he tries to say something witty and Alfie actually laughs. Shortly. But it counts. It feels _good_ and he’s not even drunk.  
  
And of course he thinks about fucking.  
  
He follows Alfie through the streets of London, thinking about how later they’re going to fuck. In Alfie’s bed. With oil. And Alfie’s going to kiss him, surely he is, he kissed Tommy yesterday so why the hell he wouldn’t do it again. Once Alfie asks him what he’s thinking about when what he’s thinking about is Alfie slowly opening him in the bed, curtains closed, his head heavy with want and just enough pain to make it real. He kind of misses a step and Alfie laughs. The man sounds actually happy. But that’s terrifying. Better not to think about that.  
  
“Let’s go home,” Alfie says, when he’s finished laughing.  
  
  
**  
  
  
So he’s kind of nervous.  
  
The fuck he is. He lights up a cigarette and glances at Alfie who’s not really looking at him.  
  
Okay, he _is_ nervous. But in a logical way. He doesn’t have many reasons to trust Alfie Solomons. And it goes both ways, of course. And Alfie’s not even _talking_ to him, only going on and on about how existence is a tricky thing and you got to grab what you can and some utter crap and it doesn’t make sense. They were supposed to fuck.  
  
“Alfie,” he says. The whiskey catches in his throat.  
  
“So,” Alfie says and turns to him, _finally_ , “what is it? Bedroom?”  
  
“What the hell were you talking about?”  
  
“No idea,” Alfie says and shakes his head with a frown, “sometimes I just talk. So why did you come here today, Tommy?”  
  
“What?” he says, but Alfie’s watching him now and they’ve been back to the house for at least half an hour and nothing’s _happening._ “You know why I came.”  
  
“But really,” Alfie says slowly, “I don’t. Because you said there was too much beard.”  
  
He blinks. “ _What?”_  
  
“ _Too much beard_ ,” Alfie says in a very low voice which is probably meant to imitate him. “That’s what you said. Your exact words. Yesterday, before you left. And I’m just wondering, you know, what this is all about. Because you could just find a nice woman to fuck.”  
  
“We just went to a -,” he bits his lip, “we just went to a fucking art museum together. You said you’d fuck me afterwards.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Alfie says, sitting down in the armchair and letting his cane lean against his left thigh, “but the thing is, I’m actually dying, Tommy. I’m happy to fuck you as long as I can do it. Then, finally, all things fade to nothing, you know. Myself included. But I’m just saying, you didn’t like my beard.”  
  
He just doesn’t get it. He stares at Alfie and tries to get what the joke is and fails. And Alfie’s rubbing his beard now with a frown, his gaze fixed on the window. “Alfie, what the hell are you –“  
  
“Fucking,” Alfie says with a nod, “is nice. Of course it’s nice. Very nice, with you. But I realise that I get sentimental, you know, because I’m dying and all that. This thing between you and me, I’d like it if it included some kissing, mate.”  
  
He takes a deep breath. “You can fucking kiss me if you want, Alfie.”  
  
“Too much beard,” Alfie says, “that’s what he says. Don’t seem to like kissing very much. But comes back the next day, all the way from his fancy house. To see me. So, what the bloody hell should I think about that?”  
  
“I don’t fucking know. Do you want me to fuck off?”  
  
“No,” Alfie says and finally looks at him again, “no no _no_ , of course I don’t want you to _fuck off._ Do you want me to kiss you?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“What do you mean, what?”  
  
“I mean,” he says and takes a deep breath and then another. Fucking hell. This is… this is weird. This is worse than the talk he and Ada had this morning, about things like liking someone and…  
  
Shit.  
  
“Alfie,” he says and covers his face with his palms. Just for a second. He shouldn’t, not like this, in front of a man whom he’s done business with and who’s sold him up three times. But he’s too tired to really care.  
  
“What?” Alfie says in a sharp tone.  
  
“Alfie,” he tries again, “I didn’t really sleep last night. And I’m just saying that I’m not… my head is like this fucking… labyrinth. And behind every corner is something I don’t want to see. I came… I like… I really want you to fuck me. It was good.”  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says, leaning against the back of his armchair. “Yeah, it was good.”  
  
“And this morning,” Tommy says even though he definitely shouldn’t, “I had a talk with my sister. About… I don’t know. But I was kind of thinking about your, you know –“  
  
“What?”  
  
“Your beard. And kissing. Because there really is a lot of beard.”  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says. He sounds proud.  
  
“Because,” Tommy says, “I don’t do _feelings._ Not since France. And don’t say a word about Grace because it was different. It was…  I don’t want to fucking talk about her. But, kissing someone with a beard feels a lot like…”  
  
“I like you,” Alfie says, grabs his cane and points it at him, “I fucking like you, you mad bastard. But the beard is a part of the deal.”  
  
“Fine.”  
  
Alfie frowns. “Fine?”  
  
“I like you, too,” Tommy says, “and if you ever tell this to anyone, I swear I’ll kill you.”  
  
“No you won’t.”  
  
“Yes I will.”  
  
“No you fucking won’t,” Alfie says, but the bastard is fucking smiling at him now, “you tried and you couldn’t. So you like me.”  
  
“And never mention it to me again. Because I don’t fucking want to hear you telling me about how –“  
  
“Thomas Shelby likes me,” Alfie says slowly, as if tasting it, and fucking hell this is _bad,_ “Thomas Shelby. Thomas _Shelby._ He likes me. He _likes_ me. And my beard.”  
  
“I said don’t –“  
  
“Wants to kiss me, too,” Alfie says, raising the cane and then slowly lowering it again, and he doesn’t even realise what’s happening until the cane is resting on his thigh. Just lightly. And then Alfie pushes it a few inches forward. “Thomas Shelby wants to _kiss_ me. This is a fucking good day for an old man.”  
  
“What the fuck you –“  
  
“Hush,” Alfie says, and the fucking cane is in his lap. Surely Alfie isn’t going to -  
  
Tap his fucking _cock_ through the layers of fabric with the fucking cane.  
  
“Alfie –“  
  
“Shut up,” Alfie says, “shut the fuck up. Please. Now I’ll fuck you. It’s going to be good. And you’re going to kiss me.”  
  
He’s not getting hard, not from just talking and the cane resting lightly against him.  
  
He’s not -  
  
_Fuck._  
  
“I could,” he says and clears his throat, “we could go to the bedroom now, Alfie.”  
  
“No,” Alfie says slowly, “I don’t think so. Not yet. I’m not done with you yet. And don’t fucking inch.”  
  
“Alfie,” he says and bits his lip. No one’s ever going to hear about this. That’s for sure. Not a fucking word about how Thomas Shelby sat still in the armchair when Alfie Solomons was fucking _caressing_ him with the bloody _cane_ and it made him fucking... _Shit._ He should kick the cane away from Alfie’s hands but he’s not sure that Alfie wouldn’t stick him with it if he tried, straight into his fucking groin. So. _So._ He’s just going to have to keep his calm. Shouldn’t be too difficult. “Alfie, fucking stop this now.”  
  
“I was never too good at taking advice from you, mate,” Alfie says, and the fucking bastard is licking his lower lip now. “Don’t tell me you don’t like this.”  
  
“I don’t –“  
  
“That’s not what I think,” Alfie says, and the cane isn’t even touching him now, only resting on his thigh, inches away from his groin. He takes a few deeps breaths. “You’re an odd man, Tommy. You come to my house. You complain about my beard. You want me to fuck you. And then you get hard from just sitting there, my cane in your lap. That’s weird, mate.”  
  
“I don’t fucking –“  
  
“And you argue about everything,” Alfie says, “so _rude_ , don’t you think? Makes me almost think that maybe you like it too much. The arguing, I mean. Maybe I should put something into your mouth just to keep you from talking.”  
  
He swallows.  
  
“But,” Alfie says, “the thing is that I like it too. The arguing. I like to watch your mouth move. And how you’re trying to make up all these insults, you know, very creative and all, but you just told me you have a crush on me.”  
  
Fucking hell. “I don’t have a –“  
  
Alfie snorts and then pulls the cane away, and for a moment Tommy thinks that he fucking ruined this somehow, but then Alfie stands up, takes a step closer and places his fucking palm on his -  
  
“Now,” Alfie says, feeling him through the fabric, “what did you say again? About that crush?”  
  
He should go. Or he should get rid of his trousers. “I like you.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Alfie says, pulling his hand away.  
  
“I have a crush on you,” Tommy says and closes his eyes, “I have a fucking crush on you. Don’t know how it’s possible because you’re the most irritating man in the fucking England. Now will you fuck me?”  
  
“Only England?”  
  
“ _What?”_ he says and takes a sharp breath when Alfie’s hand returns to his lap. “Yeah. No. The fucking world.”  
  
“That’s right,” Alfie says, runs his fingers on him through the fabric and then pulls them away, straightens his back and goes to sit in his chair. Tommy stares at the man. He’s kind of panting but maybe Alfie doesn’t notice. “Now, would you like to have some tea?”  
  
“ _Alfie –_ “  
  
“You’re going to stay for the night, are you?”  
  
He clears his throat. “Yes.”  
  
“So we don’t have any rush.”  
  
He takes a breath as deep as he can. “Alfie, I’m kind of in the middle of this already. And it’s your fucking fault.”  
  
“But you’re a patient man. Surely you won’t crack if I keep you waiting.”  
  
“Alfie, I’m going to do it myself if you make me wait any longer.” He waits. Alfie just blinks at him. “And I swear I’m going to stay for the night anyway.”  
  
“Right,” Alfie says and stands up again, “go to the bedroom and wait for me, and don’t fucking touch yourself. I need to take a piss first.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
The thing is that Thomas Shelby is now sitting in Alfie Solomons’ bed. It’s been at least two minutes. He’s not even hard anymore. But he’s not leaving either. Through the floor he can hear Alfie walking in downstairs, slow steps with the cane knocking loudly along footsteps. Alfie’s walk sounds oddly off-rhythm. And the fucking man isn’t even in the stairs yet. It’s almost like he keeps Tommy waiting at purpose, which probably is true, and Thomas Shelby bloody well isn’t the kind of a man whom you can keep waiting. But still he hasn’t fucked off yet.  
  
He takes his glasses off and rubs his forehead with both hands, thumbs pressing against the skin. He likes the man. But enough is enough. He’s not going to wait for Alfie in the man’s bed. He stands up and just then he hears Alfie’s footsteps reaching the stairs.  
  
Fuck.  
  
He sits down and puts his glasses back on, crosses his legs and waits. It takes forever or at least twenty seconds but finally Alfie’s at the door.  
  
“That took long,” he says when Alfie walks to the dresser without looking at him and pulls out the jar of oil. _Fuck._ He shouldn’t think about _that._ He swallows and then tries to look calm because Alfie turns to him again.  
  
“So this is how we’re going to do this,” Alfie says, placing the jar on the bedside table. “Tell me, what’s your general opinion about being tied up?”  
  
He blinks.  
  
“Well what the hell am I thinking,” Alfie goes on, and Tommy slowly closes his mouth, “I’m not going to ask you anyway. If you would kindly hold your wrists up for me?”  
  
He probably shouldn’t do this.  
  
“So?” Alfie asks and for a second man looks nervous.  
  
“I’m sure you can make me hold my wrists anyway you like,” he says and then waits.  
  
Alfie watches him, really watches him. Like he’s a piece of a treasure. Like he’s gold. Like he’s a fucking princess. There’s a tight knot in his stomach and he’s got absolutely no idea why, because he’s not even hard. Anymore. Yet.  
  
“Tommy,” Alfie says in a voice that’s probably rougher than was intended.  
  
“Okay,” he says, “if you aren’t going to do anything about it, I suppose I’m just going to take a cigarette and –“  
  
Alfie grabs his right wrist before he can reach his pocket. He lets the man pull his hand forward without a fight. He didn’t come here to fight about this, maybe, possibly. He’s not going to try to get rid of the piece of fabric Alfie’s tying up his wrist, or probably he is and he’ll like it but that’s the thing to worry about afterwards. He looks at Alfie’s hands that tie his wrist to the headboard, tight enough that it wouldn’t be easy to wriggle out, but not tight enough to really hurt him. If he doesn’t fight it, that is. He tucks, just to test it, and then he catches Alfie’s eyes again. The man is just staring at him with something in his eyes that he’s definitely not going to try to name.  
  
“You know I’m going to get myself free,” he says, as coldly as he can, “if you leave my left hand untied.”  
  
Alfie takes his left hand and tightens the piece of clothing around his wrist, but there’re moments when he thinks Alfie’s also trying to stroke his fingers. He bits his lip. He’s got both of his wrists tied to the headboard now so maybe there’s no use in pointing that one out, and anyway Alfie’s now standing at the end of the bed, looking at everywhere except him.  
  
“I’m still quite well dressed,” he says.  
  
“Surely you know that I like your style.”  
  
“Don’t think all these clothes are very practical for what we’re going to do.”  
  
“You don’t know what we’re going to do,” Alfie says and then takes a deep breath, “or actually you do, because I’m not a fancy guy when it comes to fucking, and this bloody knee –“  
  
“Alfie,” he says and clears his throat, “shut the hell about the knee. I _know._ Now tell me that I don’t.”  
  
Alfie looks at him. “You fucking like this.”  
  
“Of course I fucking like this. Come on, Alfie. You aren’t going to undress me.”  
  
“No,” Alfie says slowly, as if trying to decide whether this is really happening, “no, I fucking ain’t. You’re going to have your coat on, and the fucking shirt, all that fancy bullshit you like so much. But no trousers. Because I can’t deal with trousers.”  
  
“You can’t.”  
  
“Fuck no. Because what I’m going to do to you -,” Alfie clears his throat, “- we got no use for trousers.”  
  
“Is that so.”  
  
“ _Yeah._ And now,” Alfie says and leans towards him on the bed, “now you’re going to get your ass nicely up from the mattress. And don’t you fucking dare to kick me in my face when I take your pants off or I’ll tie your legs up as well.”  
  
He actually considers it for perhaps two seconds. But it sounds slightly uncomfortable. Maybe next time. If there’s going to be a next time.  
  
Of course there’s going to be a next time.  
  
He lets Alfie tuck his trousers and pants to his ankles without any kicking or arguing, mostly because it’s surprisingly fascinating to look from close distance how serious Alfie’s expression goes when he concentrates on the task. Like this is the most difficult task in the fucking world, to undress Tommy Shelby. But Alfie does it well enough and Tommy closes his eyes for a second, because _bloody hell_ he must look ridiculous, sitting here only dressed from upwards his waist, his legs sprawled on Alfie’s bed. And Alfie looks like he’s thinking about something, that deep frown on his forehead, wrinkles around his eyes, his mouth pouting.  
  
“Don’t you like it?” he asks when Alfie’s staring at his toes, and the man almost flinches.  
  
“Shut up, Tommy.”  
  
“Not really my strongest suit. You could kiss me, you know.”  
  
He can see Alfie swallowing. “I thought we were fucking.”  
  
“You’re looking at my toes,” he says. His voice sounds almost gentle. _Fuck._  
  
“Shut the fuck up, Tommy,” Alfie says in a tone that matches his.  
  
“Make me,” he says, and then Alfie climbs onto the bed, finally, sits down in between his knees and leans closer until he can catch Tommy’s jaw with his fingers, only grimacing slightly when the knee gives out a load crack. His fingers are firm. His thumb rests against Tommy’s lower lip and slips in when he opens his mouth, just enough.  
  
The kiss is too light. He can barely feel it. It’s almost like Alfie’s not even trying. He tries to place his hand on Alfie’s neck but of course he’s can’t because his fucking wrist is tied to the fucking headboard. He can feel Alfie smiling against his mouth, but when he takes a peek, he can see nothing but Alfie Solomons’ face and it’s a bit too much. He closes his eyes again and that’s pretty much when Alfie wraps his fingers around his cock.  
  
He’s pretty sure that Alfie’s going to fuck him, because isn’t that the point. That’s what he came here to do. But Alfie just fucking keeps him in his hands, not fucking doing _anything_ , because Alfie’s thumb stroking him lazily doesn’t fucking count. He needs to get off. And quite soon. But the kissing goes on and it doesn’t seem like Alfie’s in any kind of rush at all, and in a few minutes Tommy’s so angry he thinks about kicking the man in the face after all. And that’s when Alfie finally stops playing with him.  
  
He takes a deep breath that isn’t entirely controlled.  
  
“There you go,” Alfie says, the fucking beard pressed against his cheek and then his neck, “isn’t it good? I’m going to take care of you.”  
  
“The hell you –“  
  
“Just breathe,” Alfie says, when Tommy bits his lip to stop a shaky breath from falling off his mouth, “just breathe, Tommy, that’s pretty much what you can do about it anyway.”  
  
The smug bastard.  
  
“I thought you were going to –“  
  
“You have no bloody idea what I’m going to do,” Alfie says, “because let’s be honest, I just want to make you come on your fancy shirt, just like this, you biting that pretty lip of yours just because I have my hand on you. Think about that, Tommy. Think about what the hell put you to that position.”  
  
He tries to pull his wrists forward and the fabric gnaws at his skin.  
  
“You did,” Alfie says, “you put yourself right there, Tommy.”  
  
“Aren’t you going to –,” he begins but it ends with a shaky inhale.  
  
“Later,” Alfie says and strokes his cheek with his thumb, “later I’m going to. But you can do twice in the evening. And this first time, I’m going to watch you.”  
  
Fucking hell. “Alfie –“  
  
“And stop talking,” Alfie says, “or I’m going to stop right now and have a cup of tea in the living room.”  
  
Tommy keeps his mouth shut for the rest of it and for some time afterwards. Sometimes he opens his eyes but Alfie’s always watching him. Better to keep them closed. In the end it takes longer than he thought, which probably means that Alfie’s doing it on purpose, easing his grip every time Tommy needs him to go harder, the fucking bastard, and he really wants to say that aloud but the risk that Alfie might leave in the middle of this business seems real enough. And finally, finally he comes and Alfie keeps patting him on the cheek which is of course idiotic and he wants to tell the man to fuck off, only he has to catch his breath first. And his ears are ringing. When he clears his throat, Alfie’s already following the line of his mouth with his thumb. He bits Alfie’s thumb just lightly and Alfie flinches.  
  
“Oh bloody hell,” Alfie says, his thumb still in Tommy’s mouth. “You don’t have a fucking glue about how pretty you are, do you, not a fucking clue.”  
  
Shut up, Tommy thinks.  
  
“I’m going to wipe you clean,” Alfie says, “and then we’re going to have tea. And you’re going to tell me something about you that no one else knows.”  
  
“Why?” he asks when Alfie’s thumb slips out of his mouth. Obviously he can’t tell Alfie anything _important._ Maybe something that’ll make the man snort. Or something Alfie won’t believe. Or won’t know whether to believe or not. But Alfie’s kind of looking at him in a way that suggests that the man would believe almost anything.  
  
“We’ve got to talk about something, right?”  
  
“So you have to tell me something as well, something no one else knows.”  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says slowly and strokes the back of his neck, and when he tries to shift on the mattress, he realises he’s still tied up, “yeah. I can tell you something right away.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“I want to keep you.”  
  
He smiles without meaning to. “That can’t be your secret.”  
  
“Why the fuck not,” Alfie says, frowning. “No one else knows that.”  
  
He opens his mouth but can’t figure out anything to say. Alfie pulls his hand away and pats him on his bare thigh before climbing off the bed and walking to the door, muttering something about cleaning that mess before tea.  
  
  
**  
  
  
It’s almost midnight when Alfie bends him over the table, one hand in his neck, the other grabbing his hips. He lays the side of his face flat against the table. There’s a clock ticking somewhere. Surely there is. Nothing lasts for long. Alfie grabs his hips tighter and pushes into him and he listens to the clock and the rush of blood inside his head.  
  
Tick, tock.  
  
Every little thing he actually cares about, someone’s going to try to take away from him. Because he’s done his share alright. He’s done everything a sane man wouldn’t have done. But Alfie Solomons knows how to take care of himself. No one’s going to kill Alfie Solomons only because Thomas Shelby fucking likes the man.  
  
But the fucking cancer.  
  
He closes his eyes when Alfie comes inside him and then says something about the bloody knee and pulls out. He feels restless and slightly paranoid and something’s running down the insides of his thighs.  
  
Tick, tock.  
  
“Fuck that was fast,” Alfie says, his palm resting on Tommy’s lower back now. “Sorry.”  
  
“Don’t fucking apologise. Just don’t die on me.”  
  
He feels Alfie’s hand freezing. “What?”  
  
“Nothing,” he says and stands up, walks past Alfie to get a cigarette from the pocket of his coat. When he turns back to Alfie, the man is blinking at him.  
  
“It’s going to take some time,” Alfie says.  
  
Tommy sits down in the chair next to the window.  
  
“Dying, I mean,” Alfie says.  
  
“I’m hungry.”  
  
“No you aren’t. You didn’t come yet. I’m going to –“  
  
“Can you feel it?”  
  
Alfie takes a deep sigh. “Fucking hell, Tommy. We aren’t going to talk about me dying. Do you want to finish it here or should we go to the bedroom?”  
  
He clears his throat. The cigarette feels good in between his fingers, like the only steady thing that’s left. “Where’re you going to put me for the night, anyway?”  
  
“My bed,” Alfie says, “of course, you fucking idiot. Of course you’re sleeping in my bed.”  
  
“Very well,” he says.  
  
“Very well,” Alfie says, “you want me to wank you or not?”  
  
“Just let me finish this cigarette,” he says and Alfie snorts at him but kind of in a sad way.  
  
  
**  
  
  
At night he wakes up. Alfie Solomons is lying beside him, covered in blankets and fucking _snoring._ He punches the man lightly on the shoulder but it makes no difference. What the hell then. He climbs off the bed and walks to the window, and smokes a cigarette listening to Alfie’s snores and watching the street in the dim light of the streetlamps. He can’t fall asleep afterwards so he sits in the chair a few feet away from the bed and waits for the morning.  
  
“You look terrible,” Alfie says later in a rough voice, almost as if trying to cover up the surprise of seeing Tommy there. The light in the room is bright. It must be the morning already. “Come back to bed.”  
  
He goes. Alfie talks and talks something that’s probably philosophy but also possibly just the bastard rambling and trying to make him confused, and he smokes another cigarette and leans the back of his head against the headboard. Then in some point Alfie takes a cigarette from him. He would argue if the man wasn’t kissing him now, a clumsy kiss on his mouth. Too much beard. Alfie Solomons placing his palms on the sides of Tommy’s face as if they’re lovers. Maybe they are. He kisses the beard back and then some twenty minutes later leaves.  
  
It’s a long drive back to Birmingham. After twenty miles he turns back.


	3. Staying Alive in Warwickshire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A week later: relationship negotiation, riding a horse and some light kissing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it happens that I wrote third chapter for this story. Thank you so much for reading, guys! It just seems that I can't get rid of Tommy and Alfie yet! And again, I don't have chapter four in mind yet but it's certainly possible that it's going to happen.

“Sir,” the maid says from the doorway, “there is a man outside.”   
  
“What?”   
  
“On the other side of the house. I thought maybe you’d like to go –“   
  
“Yeah,” he says, “of course. You can go. Thank you.”   
  
Fucking hell.   
  
He stands up, lights a cigarette and walks through the house. Maybe it’s someone else. That’s certainly possible, only there are few men he supposes would have the guts to just hang around in his fucking yard. But it’s possible. And they just talked at the phone yesterday. There’s no reason to think that Alfie would -   
  
That Alfie would be standing in the garden, leaning into his cane and looking around as if checking the premises.  _ Fuck. _ He smiles and then tries to bite it back but what the hell, no one’s watching. He pushes the window open and grabs the window frame with both hands.   
  
“Alfie Solomons,” he calls, “what the fuck are you doing here?”   
  
Alfie glances around and then spots him at the second floor window, not looking surprised at all. The bastard. “Good morning to you too. And is that a tone you want to greet me with?”   
  
“You could’ve just, you know, knocked on the main door. Someone would’ve let you in.”   
  
“You think I just go knocking on people’s doors?” Alfie says and then pulls his shoulders back. “You look like you haven’t slept at all.”   
  
“You could’ve called too. I could’ve been out of the house.”   
  
“You didn’t call me either,” Alfie says, which is kind of fair. He didn’t. And now that he thinks about it, it’s pretty difficult to imagine Alfie Solomons on the phone, asking if he might come for a short visit. Or a long one. But that’s not something Tommy should be wondering about right now, because Alfie’s snorting at him. “So, what’s it going to be? You coming down here or what?”   
  
“I’m in my bedroom right now,” he says and sees something twitching in the corner of Alfie’s mouth. “But yeah. I’ll come down. We can have breakfast.”   
  
“Tommy,” Alfie says slowly, “I didn’t come here for breakfast.”   
  
“You’re right,” Tommy says, “I didn’t sleep. I haven’t eaten either. Go to the main door. I’ll see you there.”   
  
“I didn’t realise you’d sound so posh,” Alfie says, “standing by your fancy window in your fancy castle.”   
  
Tommy considers answering, but somehow he’s begun smiling. He takes one more drag of the cigarette and starts walking. It’s still early, a little past eleven. He saw Charlie in the morning but briefly, because his head is heavy with the sleep he didn’t get because he started thinking, which is always a bad idea of course, but how can you help it when you’re alone in your fucking house with only your kid who goes to sleep at nine in the evening. There’s just too much time. Too much silence. He walks through the hallway and to the door, and there is Alfie Solomons, looking like he’s going to be noisy as hell. Good. This is good.   
  
“Going to kiss me?” Alfie says. “I just drove all the way from London for your delightful company.”   
  
“Later,” he says and stops only when he’s standing right in front of Alfie’s face. He takes a step back. “Come inside, Alfie.”   
  
“So you don’t mind.”   
  
“No,” he says even though he should probably say  _ don’t mind what? _   
  
“’Cause I kind of thought you might.”   
  
“Well, I don’t.”   
  
“’Cause you and me,” Alfie says, “we haven’t really talked about things. Like, if it’s okay to drive from London to look at your pretty face or not. And you don’t always react so well to surprises, you know.”   
  
“You can come to see me. Just don’t scare my staff if I’m not at home.”   
  
“Me? I don’t  _ scare  _ people.”   
  
“Just bloody come inside already, Alfie. Did you have someone drive you here?”   
  
“What kind of a question is that? Of course not.”   
  
“You look tired.”   
  
“ _ You  _ look tired,” Alfie says and then, thankfully,  _ finally _ , walks past him to the stairs and through the open door. He takes a deep breath. Alfie’s shoulders seem tense and the cane knocks loudly on the floor. He follows Alfie and for a moment doesn’t really know what to say. This is odd. Alfie Solomons, at his fucking house, without a reason, which of course means  _ without a reason that’s got to do with the business.  _ Because there’s a reason. And surely they both know that at this point. It’s been a week since he tried to shoot Alfie in that beach and let the man fuck him instead. It’s been six days since he went back to London just to let Alfie fuck him again, which he did, but with a lot of emotions included. And it’s been five days since he woke up in Alfie’s bed and tried to go home to Birmingham, only he turned somewhere on the road and went back. Bloody hell how Alfie laughed at him then. But in a sweet way. And isn’t that fucking scary.   
  
“You’re thinking about something awful,” Alfie says now. “I can see it.”   
  
“Yeah,” he says, with a grin that doesn’t feel easy on his face, “emotions.”   
  
“Shit,” Alfie says with a frown, “mate.”   
  
“We can eat in the library,” he says, pats Alfie quickly on the shoulder and starts walking to the right direction. “It’s one of the nice rooms anyway. There’s so many books in there. Sometimes I talk when I’m there and I don’t feel too crazy because of the books. ‘Cause it’s almost like someone’s listening.”   
  
“You’re mad,” Alfie says in a tone half concerned and half gentle. Both of these aspects are probably bad but he’ll think about that later. Now he’s going to eat breakfast with Alfie Solomons and find out what’s going to happen next. They can’t just sit in the library and  _ talk  _ or whatever the fuck normal people do, can they? Maybe he should take Alfie to see Charlie.   
  
Maybe not.   
  
But then again, Alfie drove here from London.   
  
“This night,” Alfie says, when they’re already in the library, “you’re going to sleep.”   
  
“You’re going to stay?”   
  
“I thought so, yeah.”   
  
“Great,” Tommy says and sits down in the chair behind the table, “now, what do you want to eat?”   
  
  
**   
  
  
It’s normal enough to be intimidating. He lights up another cigarette. Maybe Alfie doesn’t notice. Or maybe they’ll just both pretend until something happens and they both crack. Or maybe nothing will happen. Maybe it’s going to go on like this, he and Alfie Solomons sitting around the table, eating fried eggs and toast, until -   
  
“Well you look grim,” Alfie says. “Wouldn’t kill you to smile a little, mate.”   
  
He gives Alfie his best glare and holds the cigarette for a while to get a sip of his coffee.   
  
“Really,” Alfie says, leaning his elbows on the table. “You that excited about seeing me?”   
  
“I am,” Tommy says and then glances over his shoulder, but there’s no one around. The doors are closed. They’re alone. “I  _ am. _ ”   
  
“You are?”   
  
“Yeah. It’s just, you know.”   
  
“Strange.”   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“And you don’t know how to smile,” Alfie says and frowns at him, “properly, do you? And you should, you know. You should smile.”   
  
He breaths in and out. Alfie’s eyes are fixed onto him as if he’s the only fucking thing in the whole world. It should be too much but it isn’t.   
  
“Look,” Alfie says, quiet enough that he wonders if Alfie wants him to hear it after all, “you’re trying. Your lips are trying to smile. But it doesn’t really work out for you. And why’s that?”   
  
“I don’t know. I didn’t sleep.”   
  
“I should’ve come sooner.”   
  
He rubs his forehead with his thumbs. Alfie’s waiting and he knows that. The room is all quiet, only he can hear through the window the gardener talking to one of the maids. Of course he can’t make sense of what they’re saying. He blinks and then looks straight at Alfie again.   
  
“Say it,” Alfie says, sounding almost perplexed.   
  
What the fuck then. “You should’ve come sooner.”   
  
“Shit.”   
  
“You said it first.”   
  
“You know,” Alfie says, grabbing an empty glass as if only to hold something, “I have this weakness. Not a big thing, really. Nothing huge.”   
  
“What?”   
  
“You aren’t going to like it.”   
  
“Try me.”   
  
“The thing is,” Alfie says and rubs his beard, “I like small things. Breakable things.”   
  
Tommy pours himself some whiskey and then empties the glass. He kind of has an idea where this is going.   
  
“I once told you that big fucks small.”   
  
“Yeah,” he says and clears his throat.   
  
“And I did,” Alfie says and licks his lower lip, the bastard, “in more than one way. You liked the latter.”   
  
“I know, Alfie. You don’t have to –“   
  
“Keep bragging,” Alfie says, “sorry, sorry. It’s just that with your insomnia and all, there’s a good change you might forget some important details. Like how you kept saying my name the last time that I –“   
  
Tommy stands up and Alfie closes his fucking mouth right away. Well then. He sits back down and lights another cigarette. “You were saying -”   
  
“Yes,” Alfie says slowly, “I was saying, this business, this fucking business that we do, you and me. It’s the wrong kind of fucking someone. I don’t like it. I don’t. I like the talking and the planning and I like scaring people off, you know.”   
  
“I wouldn’t have guessed.”   
  
“But breaking people that are small. I really don’t like that part. It’s just boring. And quite awful if you think about it. It’s the worst part of the whole fucking business.”   
  
“People that are small.”   
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says, watching through the window.   
  
“Like me.”   
  
“Only in size. And sometimes you rush into things. Or you trust your charm just a bit too much. You think it’s going to get you out of anything.”   
  
“No, I don’t.”   
  
“Yeah, you do,” Alfie says, turning his eyes to meet Tommy’s. “Just watch it a little, will you? Because I’m not going to be here saving your ass. Not for very long.”   
  
“Okay, he says and clears his throat. Fuck. He stands up and turns to the window, and he  _ knows  _ Alfie’s staring at his neck, the bastard. It’s not even noon. He’s barely slept. He can’t take a talk like this, not in the fucking morning. “Can you ride a horse?”   
  
“Fuck no,” Alfie says but too gently.   
  
“Great. We’ll go take a ride.”   
  
“Tommy.”   
  
He stops, his hand already on the doorknob. “Just don’t.”   
  
“I was trying to say that I wouldn’t want to, you know.”   
  
“Just –“   
  
“I wouldn’t have wanted to break you.”   
  
“Listen,” he says and takes a few deep breaths before turning to face the man. Alfie’s still sitting in the chair, just staring at him, as if the man’s trying to fucking read something in him. Or maybe Alfie’s just waiting for him to answer. His throat feels thick and his head hurts. “I know. I  _ know.  _ I know you’re sorry for going behind my back and I’m sorry because I kind of almost shoot you in the face. Could we at least fucking pretend that we aren’t like this?”   
  
“Like what,” Alfie says in an odd tone.   
  
Tommy waves his hand in a vague gesture. “Like…  _ this.  _ Sitting in my library in the morning, talking about…”   
  
“What?”   
  
“Feelings.  _ Feelings. _ ”   
  
“Okay,” Alfie says, grabs the cane more tightly and stands up, “let’s do it your way then. We can go for a ride. You can watch me ride a fucking horse in the garden. It’s going to look funny. And what then? Lunch? Dinner? Are you going to let me see your son?”   
  
Tommy swallows. Alfie’s looking at him as if it’s an actual question. “Probably.”   
  
“Fine,” Alfie says, looking slightly perplexed but hiding it pretty well. The beard surely helps. “I’m not too good with kids. It’s because of the lack of experience, I suppose. But I’ll try not to swear in front of him. And then what? Are you going to put me to a guestroom for the night?”   
  
“No.”   
  
“Yeah. I’m going to sleep in your bed. I’m going to fucking eat breakfast with you.”   
  
“Good,” Tommy says and presses his back against the closed door. It’s a sunny day. It’s going to be good. “Come on. I have a horse that’s slow enough for you. You aren’t going to fall.”   
  
“I fucking like you, Thomas Shelby,” Alfie says but finally,  _ finally  _ walks to the door and stops in front of his face, pointing his forefinger at Tommy’s nose, no, at his lips. He swallows and Alfie leans his fucking finger against his lower lip, almost as if trying to lure him to bite it.   
  
“What’re you doing?”   
  
“I like you,” Alfie says and then pulls his hands away and pats Tommy on the side of his face. “Just let me say it.”   
  
“Could you cut it down a little,” he says, kind of short of breath. It was only Alfie’s finger resting against his lip, _ fucking hell. _ “The emotions. Maybe a little less emotions.”   
  
“No,” Alfie says, “no, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to die. So just that you know, I’m going to be as emotional about you as I bloody want to.”   
  
He stares at Alfie. He’s not going to start thinking about the dying part, not again. He’s had his share of dying. He’s had his share of _ killing _ . He should be better at this. “I kind of thought you liked breaking me. In the bed, I mean.”   
  
“Oh,” Alfie says lightly, but there’s something dark in the man’s eyes that doesn’t go away completely, “yeah. Thomas Shelby. So fucking self-confident but breaks so easily in between the sheets. I like  _ that.  _ But I like to fix you afterwards, too. As you know.”   
  
“As I know,” he says and then bits his lip.   
  
“Great,” Alfie says with a sudden smile and pats him on the arm strongly enough that he startles, “now, you’ve expressed your wish to see your boyfriend in the saddle. Let’s go see that horse.”   
  
He opens his mouth and then closes it again. There’s something wrong with what Alfie just said. Had he slept a little better, he’d already know what it is. And then Alfie’s already in the doorway, and in the corridor, and it comes to him. “What?”   
  
  
**   
  
  
“Boyfriend,” he says later, when Alfie’s staring at the mare with a deeply suspicious look in his eyes.   
  
“What?” Alfie says, not really turning to face him. “I don’t think they should be this big.”   
  
“She’s the smallest I have. And the slowest.”   
  
“This is a bad idea. You see how she’s eyeing me?”   
  
“Alfie, you said  _ boyfriend. _ ”   
  
“You said I’m not going to fall,” Alfie says, “but I was just thinking about, how the hell would you know? You don’t know what the horse’s going to do. And my fucking knee is fucking bad, mate. I think I should just pass. But I can watch you ride a horse just fine, sitting there in the saddle and watching down to me. It’s going to be pretty.”   
  
“I’m not your boyfriend.”   
  
“Of course not,” Alfie says and then pulls his shoulders back. “Fine. How do I get to the saddle? Surely you aren’t going to lift me up?”   
  
He helps Alfie to get to the saddle and the man swears so much that even the horse looks disapproving. He keeps stroking her neck as Alfie grabs her mane with both hands. He tells Alfie to hold onto the saddle instead and Alfie snorts but still doesn’t look at him. It’s strange. He places his hand on Alfie’s thigh and the man tells him to fucking get to it already. Fine. He starts walking, the smallest possible steps, and the horse follows him as steadily as any horse ever could. He should probably tease Alfie for looking so pale about this but somehow he can’t do it.   
  
Some twenty steps later he stops. The horse stops as well. Alfie grunts and then takes a deep breath. He turns to face the man and the horse lowers her head to the grass and starts eating.   
  
“Alfie.”   
  
“What?” Alfie says. “I’m not going to gallop yet. I’m not ready.”   
  
“You want to call me your boyfriend.”   
  
He’s sure Alfie’s going to laugh at his face. Men like them don’t have boyfriends. Sometimes he thinks they don’t have friends.   
  
“Only when we’re alone,” Alfie says, his eyes searching something from Tommy’s face.   
  
“Boyfriends,” he says. His voice is hollow.   
  
“Forget it,” Alfie says then. This is the tone in which Alfie spoke to him in the beach, when he was going to shoot the man in the face. “So, why isn’t she moving? What do I do to get her to walk again?”   
  
He leads the horse two more rounds around the garden. Alfie doesn’t even complain. That’s probably a little bad but Tommy can’t figure out what to do with it. In some point of it, he realises that Charlie’s in the window, watching them through the glass. He’s going to have to tell Charlie something about Alfie. Something. And he hasn’t got a fucking idea what the hell Alfie is to him. It’s almost as if Alfie’s already figured something out that Thomas Shelby hasn’t. Fucking infuriating. He rushes the mare to take a few hastier steps and Alfie shouts at him in a genuinely stressed voice. It makes him feel a bit better, for a moment at least.   
  
“Maybe,” he says when they’re in the stables again. Alfie’s stroking the mare’s neck carefully as if she might bite at any second. “Maybe we could start with  _ friends. _ ”   
  
“I think she likes me,” Alfie says, frowning at the horse.   
  
“It’s not that I mind. It’s just a bit strange. The boyfriend thing, I mean.”   
  
This time, Alfie turns slowly to him. “Tommy, you don’t need to –“   
  
“You can call me that. If you want to. I don’t know if I can.”   
  
“Boyfriend,” Alfie says, watching him.   
  
“Fucking hell.”   
  
“Thomas Shelby, my boyfriend.”   
  
He takes a deep breath. Alfie’s fucking smiling at him. “Watch the horse or she’ll eat your fingers.”   
  
“Fuck,” Alfie says and pulls his hand away. Tommy bits his lip. The smile feels odd in his face. But then Alfie glances at him and he freezes again. Maybe he can’t do this. Getting fucked by Alfie Solomons, why not. That part was easy. And Alfie surely made it easy for him, giving him a chance to imagine that he was there because Alfie wanted him, not because _ he  _ wanted Alfie. But this, having Alfie Solomons standing right in front of him, looking him in the eyes, petting his horse in his stable in his fucking home, ready to meet his boy and have dinner with the two of them…   
  
“She wasn’t going to bite me,” Alfie says, “was she?”   
  
“Probably not.”   
  
“Very cruel of you,” Alfie says and takes a step back. “I’m fucking hungry, Tommy. All this fresh air is killing me.”   
  
He blinks. Alfie grins at him but not very happily.   
  
“Shut up,” he says.   
  
“I don’t think I will,” Alfie says but starts to walk towards the bloody door.   
  
  
**   
  
  
It turns out that Charlie isn’t afraid of Alfie, which is strange and more than a little concerning. Tommy stands in the corner of the play room, hands crossed over his chest, watching as Alfie tries to get his kid say something embarrassing about him. Also, Alfie looks like he very much tries not to swear. It’s sweet. Terrifying, but sweet. He lights another cigarette and rests the back of his head against the wall.   
  
“I’m your dad’s friend,” Alfie says and nods towards him, “a good friend. Old friend, too. So you can tell me secrets about your dad.”   
  
“Secrets,” Charlie says.   
  
“I don’t have any secrets,” Tommy says. He rather feels than sees Alfie’s smile.   
  
“Oh,” Alfie says, “I hear that your dad doesn’t have any secrets, mate. You think that’s true?”   
  
Charlie just stares at Alfie, all serious but not at all scared. Clearly he’s a crappy father. He hasn’t brought his kid up to be afraid of gangsters.   
  
“Listen. If your dad’s ever in trouble, just tell me. I have a few tricks.”   
  
“Don’t tell him about your tricks.”   
  
“I wasn’t going to,” Alfie says, throwing a glance at him. “Charlie, I really, genuinely like your dad. Could you tell him that?”   
  
He takes a deep breath but it’s too late, Charlie’s already turned to him. “Dad.”   
  
“Yeah?” he says. He should spend more time with Charlie. He really should. He just doesn’t know how to. Sometimes he’s too busy. And sometimes he forgets.   
  
“He says he likes you,” Charlie says, and Alfie smiles quite triumphantly, the fucking bastard, to come to his home and win his kid over and then smile like that. He realises that he’s smiling, too.   
  
“I like him too,” he says to Charlie, because what harm can it do now. Charlie’s not going to tell anyone. And he’s pretty sure the maids have already guessed. Or at least they will before the morning. “But don’t tell him. It’s kind of a secret. And he’s going to brag about it if he knows.”   
  
“Dad,” Charlie says so seriously it breaks his heart a little, “he can hear you. He has  _ ears. _ ”   
  
“The kid is right,” Alfie says, looking too happy for a man who’s done things like the two of them have. “I  _ have  _ ears.”   
  
“I like you.”   
  
“I know,” Alfie says and then frowns at Charlie. “You know, mate, sometimes adults speak about things only adults understand. Or do that kind of things. And I kind of have the feeling that I might do something with your dad soon.”   
  
“Shut up, Alfie,” Tommy says. “After the diner. Maybe.”   
  
“I thought we were going to wait for the night.”   
  
“You seem like you’re in a hurry,” he says, even though that’s not really the case and they both know it. Alfie looks like he’s in a hurry to kiss, maybe. To fucking kiss Thomas Shelby in his own fucking home. “And stop talking about this to my boy.”   
  
“I see that you have a railway there,” Alfie says to Charlie and nods towards the corner of the room. “You want to show me how that works?”   
  
Charlie looks at Tommy. Tommy nods. This is the fucking weirdest thing he’s ever done, to smoke by the window when Alfie Solomons kneels down on the floor, flinching only a little when his knee cracks, and tells his boy to pick a toy train. At least Alfie’s crap at playing with trains, it seems.   
  
  
**   
  
  
“Tommy.”   
  
“So,” he says and walks another circle in the room, “what do you want to do? Sleep?”   
  
“I don’t think you’re going to fall asleep anytime soon,” Alfie says, sitting down onto his bed. It’s dark outside, and very quiet inside, besides his breathing and the tap of Alfie’s cane against the floor. He knew this was coming. He knew that in the end of the day, he’d have Alfie Solomons in his bedroom, probably in his bed, ready to fuck him. He’s fucked people here before. A few times. But he prefers to do it somewhere else so that it stays less personal.   
  
“Alfie –“   
  
“Look,” Alfie says, raising his hand in the air as if to calm down a startled horse, except that Alfie wouldn’t have a fucking idea how to do that, “you’re freaking out. I can see that. I came to your home and I said I want to call you a boyfriend. I get it. You want me to get the fuck off.”   
  
“No,” he says and blinks, “yeah.  _ No.  _ I don’t want you to go. I just… we’re in my bedroom.”   
  
“You have many rooms,” Alfie says slowly. “Surely you have beds in them. And the bed isn’t essential. It’s just, you know that my knee –“   
  
“It’s personal,” Tommy says and clears his throat, “being in my bedroom. It feels personal.”   
  
Alfie just stares at him. “Felt pretty personal to me at the last time, too.”   
  
“I didn’t mean that.”   
  
“Just tell me to go,” Alfie says, “and I’ll go.”   
  
Fuck no, he thinks.  _ Fuck no.  _ Alfie isn’t supposed to go if he tells the man to. Alfie’s supposed to grab his shoulders or circle his neck with his palms, thumbs pressing lightly against where he feels himself swallow. Alfie’s supposed to talk him to the bed, to getting rid of all his clothes, to laying on the bed with his knees parted. That’s the kind of a thing Alfie’s supposed to do.   
  
“I slept here with Grace,” he says, “in this bed.”   
  
“Tommy,” Alfie says, his voice too sad.   
  
“Just stop,” he says, “stop being so  _ nice,  _ stop liking me so much, and just…”   
  
“Bend you over the bed,” Alfie says, eyeing him and the bed. “No. I don’t think I will. If you can’t handle me, Tommy, I think I’m going to sleep here for the night, and the next morning, I’m going to get my things and drive my bloody car to bloody London and never bother you again.”   
  
He puts the cigarette away and starts undressing. The coat first, then the vest. He knows Alfie’s looking at him.   
  
“I don’t mean that I have to fuck you,” Alfie says after a while, “I don’t mean that we’ve got to have sex. We can just, whatever you bloody want. You can mock my beard for the whole night if you want to. But I already told you I want to keep you. In London. That’s what I told you. I’m not here to make you believe you want to sleep with me.”   
  
“I know that,” he says and places his gun carefully on the table beside the window.   
  
“Is that what you need me to do? You need me to tie you up to your bloody bed?”   
  
“No,” he says, “I don’t think so.”   
  
“Good,” Alfie says, “because that just takes some effort. But what, Tommy? What then?”   
  
What then, he thinks and bits his lip. If there ever was going to be a point when he could get out of all this, maybe this is it. What then? I have a guestroom for you, Alfie. I think I have six or seven guestrooms. I haven’t exactly counted. You can pick one. In the morning we’ll eat breakfast. You like me and I like you and I don’t know what to fucking do with that. We’ll eat breakfast and then you’ll drive back to London.   
  
“Well,” he says aloud. “We could just have sex.”   
  
Alfie blinks. “Sex.”   
  
“The usual kind,” he says. He’s somehow short of breath even if there’s nothing going on. He starts unbuttoning his shirt and Alfie stares at his fingers. “No ties. No pulling a gun.”   
  
“Just me and you.”   
  
“Just you fucking me,” he says, “in my bed. With oil. I have some. I made sure of it after I came from London.”   
  
“You want me to fuck you,” Alfie says, “nicely.”   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“You sure you can handle that?”   
  
“No.”   
  
“But you want no tricks this time.”   
  
“I just want to,” he says, takes off his shirt and folds it onto the back of the chair, “be the kind of man who can do it.”   
  
“Gently.”   
  
“And no calling me by my name, my whole name, I mean. Because it always feels as if you’re trying to pull something out of me. As if you’re trying to make me angry.”   
  
“I probably was,” Alfie says, “because that makes it easier for you.”   
  
“I know,” he says and starts undressing his trousers. “Thank you.”   
  
“Maybe I should take my clothes off as well. You’re going to be all naked quite soon.”   
  
“There’s no rush.”   
  
“Fucking hell,” Alfie says, too gently. “Surely you know that I like watching you.”   
  
“I know.”   
  
“Good.  _ Good. _ Because this is fucking nice, Tommy.”   
  
He pulls his pants to his knees and ankles and then steps out of them. “Yeah?”   
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says, shaking his head. “You sure you wouldn’t like to turn for me?”   
  
“You want to stare at my ass.”   
  
“I want to stare at your ass.”   
  
He turns to face the wall. From behind his back he can hear Alfie taking a deep breath. Fucking hell. This is  _ weird. _ But he walks to the chair and takes a cigarette from the pocket of his coat, and when he bends down a little, he’s pretty sure Alfie clears his throat. The bastard likes him. And they’re going to do it slow and gentle, like people do, those kind of people who have boyfriends or  _ friends  _ and who don’t point their guns at their friends’ faces.   
  
“Got enough already?” he asks, when he’s halfway done with the cigarette.   
  
“Not really,” Alfie says with a somewhat dry voice. “No one’s been this nice to me.”   
  
Tommy laughs shortly. “Is that so.”   
  
“I’m just staring at your ass here,” Alfie says, “and don’t get me wrong. I like the rest of you too. Your back, for example, is quite nice. Charming. Astonishing. But to just stand there and let me stare at where I’m going to put my hands in a few minutes, I mean, my palms. And then my fingers. In between your… But you know this. Just to let me watch is so  _ nice _ of you.”   
  
“You’re probably mocking me,” Tommy says and turns, “but I’m not completely sure.”   
  
Alfie breaths out and raises his eyes to meet Tommy’s. “Maybe you don’t mind if I undress now.”   
  
“Go ahead.”   
  
“Thank you,” Alfie says and starts pulling his clothes off, almost as if in a rush. Tommy finishes the cigarette as he waits for the man to get rid of his coat, and then his shirt, and trousers, undershirt, socks, pants. Finally Alfie’s sitting naked on his bed. He puts the cigarette away and then goes to the drawer. He has absolutely no idea if the servants go over his stuff. He doesn’t know if they’re supposed to. But even if they do, maybe they don’t realise what this is meant for. He passes the jar of oil to Alfie who blinks at it and then places it on the bed.   
  
“Now,” Alfie says with a frown, “maybe you’d like to come to the bed.”   
  
He sits down beside Alfie. Their knees are almost touching. He takes a deep breath and then places his hands on the sides of his face, just for a second. Just to get rid of the distant headache, and the haziness. He’s too tired. But Alfie’s right there and the jar of oil is in between them.   
  
“You want me to kiss you first?”   
  
“No,” he says, “I don’t think I can handle that.” And then he adds, “afterwards, probably,” because Alfie looks sad and it makes him sad and he’s trying not to be sad.   
  
Afterwards, he thinks when he lays down on the bed, on his back because Alfie wants him that way, his knees parted, his legs resting on Alfie’s thighs. Then Alfie has to shift because of the bloody knee as he calls it, and Tommy watches the ceiling as Alfie’s fingers try to go back to what they were doing. Maybe Alfie’s bad at this as well. Maybe Alfie doesn’t do gentle and nice too often either. Maybe that’s why he thinks Alfie’s fingers are clumsier than before, a week ago in London. But he could get used to this, too, Alfie Solomons watching him with the utter concentration on his face, his legs sprawled on the bed and his breathing getting stuck inside his chest and Alfie’s fingers slowly, slowly going in and out. In and out. And circles. And in and out. He’s getting hard, too, and Alfie hasn’t even touched his cock.   
  
“Alfie –“   
  
“Shut up,” Alfie says, not looking at him. “You wanted it gentle.”   
  
“You have to wank me.”   
  
“No, no. A little later.”   
  
“Fucking –“   
  
Alfie stops his wrist before he can grab his own cock. “Just behave.”   
  
He kind of tries to, because otherwise it’s going to be all struggling and fighting about it again and he doesn’t want that, he wants to know if he can do it, all of it, without a hand on his throat. In his own bed. As if they’re in love or some utter nonsense like that. When Alfie finally wraps his fingers around him and squeezes lightly, he closes his eyes, only Alfie wants them open, probably for some idiotic reason. He doesn’t ask. He watches Alfie Solomons setting himself in between his legs and grabbing his waist for a moment, pressing his thumbs against Tommy’s hipbones. Maybe he’s going to have bruises. Maybe not. Alfie’s so  _ gentle. _ Fuck, he says, fuck, fuck,  _ fuck _ , but Alfie does it so slowly it doesn’t feel like fucking. Only when Alfie’s all the way inside of him, the man returns his hand to Tommy’s lap.   
  
“You want me to be your boyfriend,” he says in the middle of it. Alfie’s knee must be hurting at this point but the bastard’s clearly trying to make it last as long as possible for the both of them. Maybe he’s just been waiting to say this at the worst possible moment, and now, even with his eyes half-closed, he sees something shifting on Alfie’s face. “You want to call me your boyfriend.”   
  
“Stop talking,” Alfie says and pushes harder into him.   
  
“It’s alright,” he says. “I don’t mind. You’re fucking me in my own bed anyway.”   
  
“I said no talking.”   
  
“What’re you going to do about it,” he says and thinks for a second that Alfie’s going to place a hand on his neck after all, just to hint that if he talks one more time -   
  
Alfie pulls out of him, leans down to him and kisses him on the mouth.   
  
“What the hell,” he says but he’s kind of short of breath.   
  
“That’s what you get from talking,” Alfie says, intolerably smug, and tries to set himself in between Tommy’s thighs again. “So watch it.”   
  
“Just finish me.”   
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Alfie says, fingers around his cock again. He closes his eyes and thinks about nothing at all, besides Alfie Solomons who’s doing it gently and carefully as promised. And he can fucking take it. He  _ can. _ Sometimes he thinks he’s half a man, half a person, there’s something that he lost long time ago and never got back and never will, and he can never  _ stop  _ because it would kill him. But now he’s stopped. Just for a minute. In his own bed, where Alfie pushes back into him once more so many times that in the end he breaks.   
  
Later Alfie lays down beside him and kisses him and touches his face with the fucking hand to which he came half a minute before. He tells Alfie to fucking wipe the hand to something. Alfie wipes it in the sheets and not on his face. That’s a good thing. His breathing grows slower and finally he’s cold enough that he has to pull the blanket to cover them both. The sheets are sticky and his thighs are sticky and everything in him feels heavy enough that he might never move again, and Alfie Solomons kisses him on the neck and then starts snoring loudly. Fucking hell.   
  
  
**   
  
  
There’s a knock on the door, then another. He shifts and opens his eyes. The sunlight is everywhere in the room, lingering on the carpet and on the chairs and on the back of the hand that’s holding him by the waist. He blinks.   
  
Another knock, and the door creaks open. It’s one of the maids. He can’t even fucking remember her name. She looks surprised, no, not surprised, more like terrified. “Sir, I did – Sir, I didn’t – I thought –“   
  
“It’s alright,” he says and feels the mattress shift as Alfie takes a deep breath beside him. “I think we’re going to be here for a while yet.”   
  
“Of course, Sir,” the girl says, still looking at them with wide eyes.   
  
“Bloody hell,” Alfie says, and the girl closes the door with a loud thump.   
  
Tommy closes his eyes for a second. “That was a bit unnecessary.”   
  
“Why? I’m not even naked.”   
  
He shouldn’t laugh. He really shouldn’t. “Alfie.”   
  
“People are just too sensitive about things like that,” Alfie says, “you know, it’s just two grown men laying in the bloody bed. Nothing too shocking about that, don’t you think? Think about things we’ve seen, you and me.”   
  
He turns to his side to face Alfie, who’s rubbing his closed eyes with the heels of his palms. Alfie Solomons in his bed. Well, Alfie fits there well enough, surprisingly. “You’ve thought about that before.”   
  
“We tend to get lonely sometimes,” Alfie says, not looking at him, “men like me. Wouldn’t hurt to have someone in your bed once in a while.”   
  
He opens his mouth and closes it again. He should probably do something, like maybe touch Alfie in some way. Alfie probably doesn’t expect him to  _ kiss  _ the man, not right after they woke up, but maybe a pat on the shoulder…   
  
He sits up and reaches to take a cigarette from the bedside table.   
  
“Tommy,” Alfie says, “I didn’t –“   
  
“Yeah, yeah,” he says and takes a drag from the cigarette. It makes him feel slightly more normal. “You don’t need to say that you didn’t mean it like that. You can sleep in my bed, I don’t mind. I’m a crappy sleeper on my own. Just tell me how you want to do this.”   
  
“Do what,” Alfie says and clears his throat.   
  
“You want to call me your boyfriend,” Tommy says. Thank God he has the cigarette. “Maybe you should tell me what that means so that I know if I mess it up. I don’t want you to pull a gun at me without a warning. It gets kind of tiring, you know.”   
  
“Tommy –“   
  
“Just tell me.”   
  
“No fucking other men,” Alfie says, bluntly enough that it’s got to have been in the man’s mind already. “No letting another man fuck you. And no bloody kissing other men. Unless you don’t mean it.”   
  
“That’s it?”   
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says, watching him, the back of his head still resting on Tommy’s pillow. It’s surreal. And Alfie’s eyes are going back and forth on his face as if trying to pick something up. “I’m an old man. Bloody old. I don’t know how that happened but here we go. And I’m bad at sharing. Always have been. And it’s too late to change.”   
  
“Fine,” he says and stands up. Alfie looks fucking nervous. This is weird, this thing they’re doing, weird enough that he should be more concerned. But he isn’t. He starts pulling his clothes on and Alfie Solomons is still laying in his bed, watching him. “I won’t fuck other men.”   
  
“You won’t,” Alfie says slowly.   
  
“But you can’t either.”   
  
“Because you don’t like sharing.”   
  
“Because I don’t like sharing,” he says and pulls on his coat. “Why’re you still in the bed anyway? Waiting for another round?”   
  
Alfie smiles. Bloody hell, he likes that smile. He likes the way Alfie Solomons grins at him as if the man’s thinking about something that can’t be said aloud, only he’s quite sure that Alfie Solomons has the guts to say anything aloud. If not Alfie, then who.   
  
“To be completely honest,” Alfie says with the grin still on, “twice a night is pretty much enough for me, mate. I’m not as young as you.”   
  
“Bullshit.”   
  
“But I have to say,” and Alfie’s voice grows softer,  _ fuck, _ “your nightmares sounded pretty bad. I couldn’t just leave you there.”   
  
“Don’t talk about my –“   
  
“It’s about France, isn’t it?”   
  
“Rarely happens anymore,” he says, “only sometimes when I’m… when I’m not busy enough.”   
  
“So it’s good that I just happened to be there,” Alfie says, “to distract you a little.”   
  
“You fucked me, Alfie.”   
  
“Yeah. So I did. And it worked out, didn’t it? A few kisses and you got your heartbeat back to normal. And then up again.”   
  
_ A few kisses. _ He sits down in the chair and then watches Alfie finally getting up from the bed and starting to pull the clothes on. There were a few kisses alright. The dream was the same old one again. He was in the tunnel and they came. It’s rare these days, it really is. Sometimes he barely remembers it for weeks. Must be that it’s been so long. But when it happens, he still wakes up his heart banging inside his head and his skin covered in sweat, only this time Alfie Solomons was right there, grabbing his face and talking nonsense and holding him down when he for a few seconds didn’t know where he was and tried to push Alfie off. And there’s no way he could really hurt Alfie, not without his gun, so it was alright that he lost control for a moment. It was alright. And Alfie kissed him as if they were lovers and held him and then when he asked, fucked him very slowly until it all finally faded away from his head and changed into a nice fog in his mind and the sound of skin against skin and the sensation of Alfie’s hand holding his cock. It was good.   
  
He rubs his chin with his palm. It’s morning. He shouldn’t think about the night in the morning.   
  
“I thought you said you were hungry.”   
  
He looks at Alfie. The man is all dressed now. “Yeah.”   
  
“And after the breakfast,” Alfie says with a frown.   
  
“After the breakfast,” he says, “we take two horses and we go for a ride.”   
  
“Tommy,” Alfie says slowly, “I don’t know if you noticed, but I can’t bloody ride a horse.”   
  
“I can. Yours is going to follow mine.”   
  
“You sure that’s safe?” Alfie says with a genuinely worried voice.   
  
Well, it isn’t. They eat breakfast, only it’s difficult to concentrate on eating because it seems that he can’t stop smoking for a fucking second. And then he takes Alfie to the stables again and tells the man at least twice that the horse isn’t going to bite him, probably, or kick him, probably, or throw him off, probably. But it goes surprisingly easy from there. Alfie looks absolutely terrified and that keeps the man from fucking talking all the time, which is good, and they go very slowly, which is infuriating but at least there’s no reason not to smoke a cigarette or two when they ride across the fields and the woods. And also, he has time to think about what he’s going to do with Alfie Solomons. The man doesn’t even drink so how the hell are they going to spend their time? And there aren’t any art galleries here for him to take Alfie to. Maybe they should go to Birmingham for the afternoon. He could take Alfie to a movie or something. Alfie would probably like that, the bastard.   
  
  
**   
  
  
“What about tonight?” Alfie says when they’ve finished the dinner.   
  
“What do you mean, what about tonight?”   
  
“I told Ollie I’m not going to hurry back. But maybe you’d like to, you know.”   
  
“I’d like what?” he says. One of the maids is still in the room, emptying the table. He should really learn their names. He never meant to be that kind of a man who doesn’t even know who’s working for him, especially when he sees them every bloody day in his own house.   
  
“To spend time with Charlie,” Alfie says, rubbing his beard, “or, I don’t know. Drink whiskey alone in your nice castle.”   
  
“No,” Tommy says. Fucking hell, he’s smoked all of his cigarettes. “You should stay.”   
  
“I should stay,” Alfie says slowly.   
  
“Yeah. You should stay and, you know. Kiss me.”   
  
The maid drops a plate onto the table. Luckily it doesn’t break. He and Alfie glance at the girl as she’s trying not to look startled.   
  
“You say,” Alfie says with a grunt, “that I should stay and kiss you.”   
  
“That’s what I said.”   
  
“That’s what you said alright.”   
  
“You going to do it?”   
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says, tapping his cane onto the floor a bit absent-mindedly. “It’s not like I have anything better to do. To stay and kiss Thomas Shelby is, I think, a pretty good offer.”   
  
“I thought so,” he says, and the maid finally leaves in a badly concealed rush. Maybe he should worry about this a little more. Fucking Alfie Solomons is, strictly speaking, illegal.   
  
“What’re you thinking about?”   
  
“Law,” he says. “I’ve run out of cigarettes. We have to go to the library, I have more there.”   
  
“Law,” Alfie says. It looks like the man’s going to laugh.   
  
“Yeah. No.”   
  
“Tonight, if you let me stay, I’m going to do something that’s absolutely illegal.”   
  
“Something?”   
  
“You’re going to love it,” Alfie says and then clears his throat. “But don’t get your hopes up. I’m not very imaginative. It’s probably going to be more of the same.”   
  
“I’d like that very much,” Tommy says and stands up, “but now I really need a cigarette.”   



	4. Staying Alive and Being Fine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the new boyfriend meets the family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, one more chapter to this story! This is the last chapter as well. Writing this has been so fun and it's been mostly because of you guys, although it doesn't hurt that I still have a huge crush on Tommy and also a thing for the show in general. And writing this has been quite exciting too, because I never knew I was going to write more than one chapter, and then I've been writing these one by one because you've been so great and I've got new ideas about what to write next.
> 
> I'm planning to write a sequel to this, maybe something more angsty, but I'm going to post it as a new work and add to the 'Staying Alive' series, so you'll find it there! Also, I'm pretty sure I'm going to write more about these two idiots who absolutely should be idiots together. As have been said, you can also find me on [tumblr!](http://toyhto.tumblr.com)
> 
> And here we go, the last of it - -

There’re footsteps but surely they’re inside the dream. He’s seventeen again. The war hasn’t started. He’s walking the street in Small Heath and the echo of his steps keep ringing in his head. He’s not going to leave this place, not for France. Once in a while he’s going to get the fuck out of the city and camp by the river somewhere but that’s all. And he’s going to find a nice girl and fall in love and marry her and she’s not going to die. Not soon at least. Not right in the beginning. Not fucking before he has time to love her for ten, no, twenty, no, _fifty_ years.  
  
He’s going to be alright. He’s going to -  
  
Someone opens the door. This isn’t the dream anymore. He reaches for the gun on the bedside table, his eyes still hazy with sleep.  
  
“Bloody hell, Tommy,” says Ada’s voice, “you actually were asleep.”  
  
He lets go of the gun. “Yeah. I was.”  
  
“And,” Ada says, pointedly, and leaves the rest of the sentence hanging in the air. He glances at Ada. She’s standing in the doorway with crossed arms and a smile that’s somehow smug. And then he gets it.  
  
“Excuse me,” Alfie says, “but aren’t you going to introduce me to the woman who’s just walked into your bedroom and looks like she knows your house?”  
  
“Alfie, you bloody well know that she’s my sister.”  
  
“I bloody well am his sister,” Ada says. She sounds like she’s trying to hide a smile. Fucking hell. It’d be better if she was actually angry at him. Or them. Or probably just him. “Tommy, I realised you had a guest in the house but what I didn’t realise was that you had him in your bed.”  
  
“Listen,” Alfie says, and Tommy lets the back of his head sink against the pillow, “I might be a _guest_ but you know what, this is the only bed in which I’ve slept in this house. The only fucking bed. And it’s quite comfortable. I’ve had no complaints about it. The mattress is good, the pillows are good. The company not always so but well, a man of my age –“  
  
“Shut up,” Tommy says and takes a deep breath, “shut the fuck up, both of you. I was _sleeping_ –“  
  
“I hope he’s been behaving,” Ada says. “He’s quite cranky sometimes. Personally I think it’s because of all the stress, you know, ‘cause he always has to be the only fucking person who knows what’s going on.”  
  
“That sounds about right,” Alfie says and lays his palm on Tommy’s shoulder. He tries to push Alfie’s hand away but it doesn’t inch. He could maybe kick Alfie in the groin with his knee but that would make Ada laugh. “He thinks he’s so clever, doesn’t he? Tommy fucking Shelby, the cleverest kid in the bloody block. Sometimes I think I must be crazy because you know, I’m pretty fond of him anyway.”  
  
“Yeah, me too,” Ada says. “How long do you think that you guys will stay in bed? I think breakfast is ready.”  
  
“What do you think, Tommy?” Alfie says, turning to him, the fucking traitor. To talk to his own sister like that, to give her a reason to the bloody smile – “I’d guess you’re going to keep me busy for ten minutes, isn’t that right, mate? Or maybe fifteen. You don’t look like you’re totally awaken yet.”  
  
“Fucking hell, Alfie,” he says and stares at the man. Alfie’s smiling at him but trying to hide it behind the beard. He’ll make Alfie fucking regret that smile. He’ll kiss Alfie until the man can’t fucking breathe and then they’ll see who’s laughing.  
  
“Straight back at you,” Alfie says and strokes an old scar on Tommy’s shoulder with his fingertips. Then Alfie turns to Ada again and says with a polite tone, “I suppose we’ll be fifteen minutes, Ms. Shelby.”  
  
“It’s Mrs. Thorne,” Ada says, but her voice lacks the sharp edge. “You must be Alfie Solomons.”  
  
“I bloody well am, Mrs. Thorne,” Alfie says, running his fingers on Tommy’s neck. He can feel Alfie’s fingers stopping for a second when he swallows. “Nice to meet you.”  
  
“Nice to meet you, too,” Ada says and smiles. That’s a genuine smile. Tommy opens his mouth but Ada’s speaking again. “Try to be gentle with him, Mr. Solomons. He doesn’t realise how irritating he gets sometimes.”  
  
“I’ll do my best, Mrs. Thorne,” Alfie says, his hand fucking holding Tommy’s jaw now. He should probably pull his gun at Alfie. There’s absolutely no way he’ll let this one go. But Ada’s already closing the door. Two more seconds, and then they’re alone, he and Alfie Solomons who’s gently pressing the tip of his index finger against Tommy’s lower lip. Maybe if he bit it, he’d feel slightly better.  
  
“Alfie.”  
  
“I know,” Alfie says, “you were sleeping and now you’re cranky. Want me to fuck you?”  
  
“ _Alfie._ ”  
  
“She seems nice. Your sister, I mean. I wonder why I haven’t met her before.”  
  
“She was smiling at us.”  
  
“She likes you, you idiot,” Alfie says. The finger is gone from his mouth. He inhales deeply and watches from the corner of his eye as Alfie stretches down on the bed again. Alfie looks tired.  
  
“You didn’t sleep well.”  
  
“The fuck you know about that. You were snoring and drooling.”  
  
“I don’t snore.”  
  
“You fucking snore, mate.”  
  
“I don’t –“  
  
“I listened to it,” Alfie says, “thinking that it’s damn better than the nightmares. Because, you know, then it’s just you pushing me away all sticky with sweat and breathing like you’ve run ten bloody miles. I prefer snoring.”  
  
“I don’t have nightmares anymore,” Tommy says and wipes his face with both hands. There might be a drop of drool still in the corner of his mouth. But it’s probably from when Alfie put his finger in there. He blinks and pushes his elbows against the mattress. The dim light of the day is coming through the curtains. He needs a cigarette. “Are you alright?”  
  
“And what the hell do you mean by that?”  
  
He stares at Alfie long enough to make anyone look away. Alfie stares straight back at him.  
  
“I’m not that sick yet,” Alfie says finally. He sounds angry but his voice is oddly small. “Don’t fucking talk to me like that.”  
  
“You look like you haven’t slept in days.”  
  
“I’m just old,” Alfie says, “fucking old. That’s why I don’t have your pretty looks.”  
  
“No, it’s not that.”  
  
“ _Bloody hell_. If you’re going to be like that, I might as well get my ass off your bed and go to –“  
  
He grabs Alfie’s wrist before the man sits up. Then he slowly lowers himself back onto the mattress. Alfie sighs.  
  
“Just don’t remind me.”  
  
“You said fifteen minutes,” he says. Alfie doesn’t pull his hand away. “Ada’s going to come back looking for us, you know.”  
  
“I’ll have you against the door. She won’t get in.”  
  
“You’re just talking. It’s been five minutes and you’ve done nothing.”  
  
When Alfie kisses him, he’s still thinking about the wrong things. The dark rims around Alfie’s eyes. The smallness of Alfie’s voice. And the clocks. The fucking clocks, all the time, going on and on and on until he runs out of time. It’s like a fucking time bomb, that’s what it is. And it shouldn’t feel like this. He already lost Grace. He almost lost Charlie once. He couldn’t possibly love anyone more than Grace or Charlie. And he really thought he’d gone a bit numb over the years. It started in France, that much is clear, it started there in the fucking mud and it grew and grew. Grace only shook it a little. A lot. But not enough. And Charlie shakes it a little but not enough. He’s a numb man. He shouldn’t be thinking about how Alfie Solomons is going to bloody die on him and it’s happening slowly, slowly, and there’s no way he can stop it and he doesn’t know when it’s going to happen, only that it’s going to happen and that it’s already started.  
  
“Tommy,” Alfie says, holding his jaw firmly enough to bruise. Good. “Fucking hell, Tommy, you’re thinking about it. Stop thinking.”  
  
He reaches down, pushes his pants to his ankles and kicks them off, and Alfie gives him just enough space to do that but looks quite disapproving. “Take the jar. I think it’s at your side.”  
  
“We haven’t even started yet,” Alfie says. The bastard’s letting his fingers go loose on Tommy’s jaw.  
  
“Just fuck me.”  
  
“No,” Alfie says and pushes him down to the mattress. He takes a sharp breath. Alfie’s hands are heavy on his shoulders, heavy enough to keep him in place for a few seconds. And then he gets his feet against the mattress and pushes himself upwards so that his hips collide with Alfie’s. It’s not subtle but Alfie grunts and then grabs his shoulders firmer. “ _Fuck_ , Tommy. I said no. I’m not going to fuck you only to so that you can get out of your little head for a few seconds.”  
  
“It’s not about that,” he says but his voice stays bleak. Alfie looks at him and sees straight through.  
  
“You’ve become bored,” Alfie says in a quiet voice, quiet but not dangerous, not the way he wants it, “we’ve been together for three bloody weeks and you’re bored of me fucking you nicely. That won’t silence your fucking head anymore. That’s why you’re trying rush it. Because if you let me kiss, you know it’s going to be nice and good and I’m going to make you come so fucking slowly you’re going to lose yourself but not in a way you want to.”  
  
“Over the desk,” he says and pushes his hand inside Alfie’s pants. He can see Alfie biting his teeth together. “You can bend me over the desk. That way you can’t see my face. You can’t see me worrying.”  
  
“It’s all that you fucking do,” Alfie says but his voice is getting heavy even if he tries to stop it. And he’s hard. He’s already hard in Tommy’s hand.  
  
“Over the desk, Alfie. Five minutes. Make me come in five minutes.”  
  
“You aren’t fucking _hard_.”  
  
“I know,” he says and gives Alfie one good stroke. “I’ll get there. I’ll stop worrying.”  
  
Alfie snorts at him but then grabs his elbows and pulls him out of the bed, over the room, to the desk that’s waiting by the window. He remembers vaguely that he didn’t get that cigarette yet, and then Alfie’s bending him over the desk. There’s a gentle palm resting against the low of his back and then it’s gone. He closes his eyes and listens to Alfie’s footsteps with an odd crooked rhythm. It’s odd with the cane and odd without it. Odd all the same. Maybe it’s what they are, he and Alfie Solomons. But then Alfie’s back at him, back standing behind him, and he already has one warm wet fingertip inside of him.  
  
Alfie’s right, he can’t stop worrying. Maybe it’s because that’s been his job for almost ten years now. He worries about his brothers and his sister and his aunt and the whole fucking family. And he worries about the business. And now, it seems, he worries about Alfie Solomons, who’s going faster than he probably wants to but not as fast as Tommy wants him to. Slow it down and his thoughts will catch up. He bits his lip and then tells Alfie to fucking hurry, and Alfie runs his fingers through Tommy’s hair and then, here they are. Here they are. Alfie’s inside of him. He’s still sore because of the night. It’s good.  
  
“I think we’re doing this the wrong way,” Alfie says to his ear in the midst of the fucking, “I think you should say that you’re fucking worried and we should have a cry about it and you should drink yourself stupid and then comfort me and I’d comfort you and all that shit. That’s how it should be. It’d be much better than fucking you so that you might forget.”  
  
No, it wouldn’t. Because if he wasn’t hard before, now he is, and his legs are going limb and his thighs are trembling and there’s not room in his head for anything else than that part of Alfie’s that’s inside of him. If there’s something breakable in him then that’s exactly what’s Alfie’s pushing into. He’s not bloody numb yet even if he ought to be, but this is the one thing that he likes about it.  
  
Or maybe one of a few things, he thinks a little later. Alfie pulls him off the desk because he can’t seem to figure out how to do it himself. His legs tremble. He sits down in the nearest chair and takes a cigarette, and Alfie fucking takes the cigarette from his mouth and kisses him instead, a wet, hungry kiss straight on his mouth. As if they’re lovers.  
  
“Your sister’s going to figure out what we did,” Alfie says, pulling his pants on. It’s easy enough for him. His cum is running down Tommy’s fucking thighs. Tommy’s going to have to clean himself up and the bastard’s probably going to go downstairs before him and talk shit to his sister.  
  
“Surely you won’t mind,” he says. Smoking a cigarette should take longer. He doesn’t really want to move yet.  
  
“Of course I don’t bloody mind,” Alfie says. “But I thought you might. Sometimes, you know, men like us –“  
  
“I’m not like you.”  
  
“The hell you aren’t. Sometimes men like us have a weak point. And that’s their family.”  
  
“I don’t mind that she knows. She’s bringing a woman to a dinner today. I know her. I fucked her once, for the business. I probably shouldn’t have. But they weren’t together then.”  
  
Alfie stares at him for a few seconds and then laughs shortly. “Really?”  
  
“Really, did I fuck my sister’s woman?” he says and reaches for another cigarette but Alfie grabs his wrist. “Yes. I’m kind of sorry about that. Feels strange. Also she’s a bit uncomfortable about that. Jessie, I mean. Not Ada. Ada’s fine. Let go off my hand, Alfie.”  
  
“We should go to breakfast and you’re still naked, and you’re going to smoke another bloody cigarette.”  
  
“Just give me a few more minutes and I’m going to be fine.”  
  
“I’m fine, too, Tommy. Stop looking at me like you’re thinking about how I’m falling into decay.”  
  
“Stop talking,” he says. He can’t seem to get loose from the grip Alfie’s fingers have on his wrist, so he grabs Alfie’s wrist instead. Now they’re even.  
  
“You love it when I talk,” Alfie says, pats him on the cheek with his free hand and then pulls away. “Clean yourself up. We’re already late.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
“He seems nice.”  
  
“Fucking hell, Ada,” he says and takes a step away from the window. Ada stops beside him and takes his cigarette without asking.  
  
“I mean it. He talks a lot but I think he’s probably a bit nervous. About being here, you know. And about meeting us all.”  
  
“He’s not nervous.”  
  
“Also, I think he genuinely likes you,” Ada says and passes his cigarette back to him, finally, “a lot.”  
  
He rubs his forehead. His head hurts less in the days when he’s slept well, like this one. But the whole family is coming for the dinner later so that’s kind of ruining the effect of good sleep.  
  
“So,” Ada says. He should stop this now. He should turn and walk away. But he’s become slow. “So he really likes you. And you like him. What’s wrong?”  
  
He opens his mouth to say that he doesn’t _like_ Alfie Solomons, but Ada would spot the lie blindfolded, and also he doesn’t quite remember why he’s supposed to claim that he doesn’t feel what he feels. Whatever fuck that is. “Nothing’s wrong.”  
  
“Don’t talk shit.”  
  
“He’s ill.”  
  
Ada shifts as if she’s trying to shake his words off. “He looks fine.”  
  
“He has fucking cancer.”  
  
There’s a short silence. Of course he shouldn’t have told.  
  
“In his lungs.”  
  
Ada takes his cigarette, walks to the chair in the corner of the room and sits down. It’s probably going to rain later. It’s that kind of a day. And Alfie’s with Charlie, playing with Charlie’s railway that’s all over the floor. Who knew that Alfie Solomons has a fucking thing for toy trains.  
  
“That’s why you’re sad,” Ada says finally. “That’s a good reason, too.”  
  
“I can’t imagine him dead.”  
  
“Don’t,” Ada says. “You can’t prepare for it anyway. It won’t get easier even if you live through it thousand times before it actually happens. And it might not in years, right?”  
  
“I don’t know. I haven’t asked. I don’t think he knows either.”  
  
“Maybe you should ask.”  
  
He lights another cigarette. Maybe he could go for a ride. But he wants the fastest horse and he wants to gallop so that the rain pours onto his face and the wind gets through the fabric and his hands go numb. And Alfie can’t take anything faster than a few steps of trot. He ought to go alone.  
  
“I don’t know why I’d care that much,” he says. “We aren’t even… we aren’t…”  
  
“I talked to Annie,” Ada says and then frowns at him, “one of the maids. You should really learn their names. She said Alfie calls you his boyfriend.”  
  
“Did she?”  
  
“Yeah. She looked pretty nervous about it. I laughed.”  
  
“You laughed?”  
  
“I suppose he doesn’t call you that to your face.”  
  
He shrugs. Ada laughs and then says something about how he cares, of course he cares. A little later they stop in the doorway and watch Alfie and Charlie sitting on the floor, playing with trains. Charlie looks slightly bored. Alfie doesn’t.  
  
He’s fucked. He really is. He takes a deep breath and thinks he can see Ada glancing at her but it’s probably for the best not to look at her now. She’d only look sad. He goes to Alfie instead, places a hand on the man’s shoulder to keep himself steady as he kneels down onto the floor. He asks about the railway and Charlie fixes him a stare that clearly says _you should know._ He keeps his hand on Alfie’s shoulder and Alfie explains the railway to him.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“He likes Charlie,” Polly says, frowning. The light behind the windows is getting dark and Alfie’s telling Charlie something about the trains, real ones probably. He didn’t know Alfie knew anything about trains. “Fucking hell, Tommy.”  
  
He puts away the cigarette and glances at Polly. “Fucking hell what, exactly?”  
  
“You’re -,” Polly says and makes a vague gesture towards Tommy’s kid and Tommy’s Alfie Solomons. “The two of you are… what the fuck _is_ this, Tommy?”  
  
He doesn’t answer. The dinner hasn’t even started yet. Michael’s in the stables, wanted to see the horse Tommy bought last week. Arthur and Linda and the kid aren’t here yet. And sometimes he still realises he’s waiting for John to appear, and that cuts him like a knife every bloody time. As if he actually forgot for a second.  
  
“You really like him, Tommy,” Polly says, her voice gentler now. That’s bad. He shouldn’t have let it go this far. But he’s tired.  
  
“I really like him,” he says.  
  
“Tommy –“  
  
“And what exactly -,” he says, “- are you opposing to?”  
  
“I’m not -,” Polly says and swallows down the rest. “I thought you were supposed to kill him.”  
  
“Yeah,” he says. “I let him fuck me instead.”  
  
He hears Polly’s soft gasp, and then Polly starts laughing quietly. That’s better. “And that worked for you.”  
  
“And that worked for me alright;” he says. “I suppose Ada already told you that he’s ill.”  
  
“Yeah,” Polly says slowly and raises her palm. “Give me a cigarette.”  
  
He gives her one. She lights it and then they watch Alfie and Charlie for a few minutes, until Michael finally comes back from the tables and starts asking questions about why Alfie Solomons is here, wasn’t Tommy supposed to quit doing business with the man? Polly tells Michael not to worry about that. It’s illegal anyway. Polly laughs and Tommy laughs and it feels odd, it feels like he’s inside of a play in which his family is together again and everything’s kind of alright for the moment and he’s just brought a new boyfriend for everyone else to meet. Luckily, Arthur and Linda arrive before he can think about that for too long.  
  
In the dinner, it turns out that Alfie and Linda don’t really like each other. He kind of expected that. Or maybe it’s less about _liking_ and more about the two of them trying desperately to be wittier and sharper the other one. Tommy takes another cigarette and then remembers that he’s supposed to eat, but he’s too stressed for that. It’s not that he doesn’t enjoy listening to Alfie’s ramblings, but Linda is sometimes frighteningly sharp and Alfie’s surely going to say something bloody stupid and Linda’s not going to let it go. On his left side, Ada has her left arm on Jessie’s arm and she’s stroking her gently as if to calm her down, even if Jessie hasn’t said more than two sentences in the whole dinner. Arthur looks like he’d rather be somewhere else and Michael tries to talk about business but no one’s listening, except Polly who also seems to be far too entertained about Linda’s and Alfie’s conversation.  
  
“Bloody hell,” Alfie says in the middle of it, “he bloody listens when he has my fucking cock inside of him.”  
  
Everything goes quiet. The maid standing in the doorway turns around and flees. Polly grins. Ada sighs. Jessie blushes. Arthur blushes more. Michael stares at Alfie with a frown as if he’s not certain what _that_ meant. Linda looks absolutely delighted and that’s terrifying, and Alfie turns very slowly his gaze to meet Tommy’s. He looks like he wants to apologise but in private and maybe without words.  
  
“Tommy -,” Alfie starts.  
  
“Listen,” Tommy cuts in, “everyone. This is how it’s going to be. If you don’t want to hear about my boyfriend’s cock, don’t ask about it. Now, is there anything anyone would like to say?”  
  
Everyone just stares at him. He realises he’s actually pretty hungry.  
  
“Great,” he says and turns to Jessie. “Now, Ms. Eden, I heard you’re planning a new strike? Any chance it’ll affect my factories?”  
  
A few minutes later he catches Alfie staring at him. The man looks oddly happy.  
  
  
**  
  
  
In the end it’s not too difficult. They finish the dinner and talk about everything else but Alfie Solomons. Even Alfie doesn’t talk about himself. Ada runs her fingertips on Jessie’s palm on the table and it seems that she’s daring them to ask. They don’t. After dinner Tommy catches Ada and Jessie kissing in the library, and Ada glances at him with a look he can’t really interpret. He closes the door again, finds a quiet corner in his fucking house full of corners and smokes a cigarette watching through the windows. Maybe he looks the same to them than Ada did to him a minute ago. Maybe he has the same mix of being bloody afraid to lose something but at the same time happy to have found it, in his eyes.  
  
Alfie finds him before he can finish the cigarette. The man drags the nearest chair to him and sits down, and together they look at the yard that’s all dark by now. Or maybe Alfie’s looking at him. He takes a peek, but no, Alfie’s looking through the window.  
  
“What?” he asks a little later.  
  
“Sorry about that,” Alfie says. “You probably didn’t bring me here to say that to their fucking faces.”  
  
“I think it went pretty well.”  
  
“You think?” Alfie says. There’s a hint of laugh in his voice.  
  
“We told them. We were supposed to tell them and we did.”  
  
“We were?”  
  
“I think so,” Tommy says. They’re standing in the corridor so there’s no way he could kiss Alfie now. And it’s not like they do that all the time, anyway. Kissing is for situations when they’re in bed and trying to talk each other into something, or when they’re fucking and Alfie wants to be bloody annoying. Or when Alfie wants to be gentle, which to be honest has been happening a lot lately. “I don’t think I could’ve kept this from them.”  
  
“And what now?” Alfie says with a quiet voice. Maybe it’s a _what now that we’ve told your family we’re together._ Or a _what now that we’re as much a couple as we can._ _  
_

_"_ Now, Arthur and Linda will be leaving in a few minutes. We should go to say goodbye.”  
  
“And stand in the doorway side by side like a fucking couple.”  
  
“Yeah,” Tommy says and starts walking. “You coming?”  
  
“Of course I’m coming,” Alfie says, standing up and following him with a familiar tap of the cane echoing in the corridor. “You’re insane.”  
  
“Didn’t you want to be introduced to my family?”  
  
“No one else,” Alfie says and grins dimly, ”no one else in the whole fucking world would’ve introduced me to their family.”  
  
Tommy doesn’t answer to that. Maybe not. Maybe other people just don’t dare to. Or maybe they don’t know what to say because things like these just don’t happen, or when they do, nobody fucking talks about it. But Tommy Shelby bloody dares to. And that’s it. Alfie should know. And then he thinks that maybe Alfie knows. Maybe that’s why Alfie talked to Tommy’s sister-in-law about fucking him.  
  
“Did you do it on purpose?” he asks when they’re almost in the yard.  
  
“No,” Alfie says bluntly.  
  
Polly and Michael leave soon after Linda and Arthur. Michael still looks a bit confused and Polly looks like she wants to say something but bites her lip in the last minute. And Alfie’s almost polite to everyone and doesn’t try to argue with them, and then soon enough their house is quiet again, only Ada and Jessie are listening to music in the library. He told them they could stay for the night. Now he leans towards Alfie in the doorway, only slightly, only enough that their arms brush against each other. Alfie flinches.  
  
“I don’t want to go in just yet.”  
  
“Want to be alone?” Alfie asks in a somewhat vague voice.  
  
He doesn’t look at Alfie, only takes a cigarette and lights it. “We could take a little walk. Can you stand it?”  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Well, then,” Alfie says and taps his cane against the stone in the doorsteps, “I can stand it.”  
  
They walk for a few minutes. It’s getting a bit cold but he doesn’t mind. He listens to the sound of Alfie’s cane and the footsteps, and the house watches them with light in every window. Through the library window he sees Ada and Jessie dancing. It looks impossibly slow. Maybe it’s a slow song. Maybe they aren’t listening.  
  
“They look young,” Alfie says.  
  
He glances at Alfie and then at the women again. “Yeah, they do.”  
  
“I’m jealous,” Alfie says, as if admitting he’s done something utterly stupid.  
  
“Do you know how much you have left?” Tommy asks before he can stop himself. Fuck it. He was going to ask sooner or later.  
  
“No,” Alfie says. “Maybe six months.”  
  
“Six _months?_ ”  
  
“It’s _months_ , Shelby. Months. Not years. But they didn’t tell me how many.”  
  
He takes a cigarette and realises his hands are shaking.  
  
“They probably can’t,” Alfie says. “I suppose things like this are pretty hard to foresee.”  
  
He’s getting cold. They should probably go back inside.  
  
“Tommy?”  
  
“I don’t -,” he starts but his voice fucking cracks. “I can’t –“  
  
“Just fuck off when you have to,” Alfie says, kindly enough that Tommy wants to hit the man in the face. Or fucking pull a gun at him. “I mean it. The second you need to get out, just go.”  
  
“I’m not going to fucking –“  
  
“Yeah, you are.”  
  
“They shot my wife in my fucking arms. I can stand you… you…”  
  
“I’m going to lock myself up in my house in the end,” Alfie says, “no one’s going to see me there, except whomever I have to hire to, you know. Feed me. Hand me a bucket.”  
  
“I’m going to visit.”  
  
“No, you aren’t. It’s fine. I mean it. I don’t want you there.”  
  
He glances at Alfie but Alfie’s staring the east corner of the house with the most concentrated look possible. “You’re going to change your mind.”  
  
“No, I fucking –“  
  
“Let’s go inside,” he says and starts talking fast enough that Alfie’s going to be in trouble to keep up with him. “I’m cold. And the girls are enjoying themselves a bit too much. We could have a talk with them.”  
  
“About what?” Alfie says from behind his back, but he can hear Alfie’s footsteps following him on the soft grass.  
  
“I don’t know. Politics. Or sleeping together.”  
  
“You’re punishing me,” Alfie says, “because I told you what you wanted to hear.”  
  
“I don’t know how they do it. I really don’t. I can’t imagine how it happens.”  
  
“You’re drunk:”  
  
“Barely,” Tommy says. “Come on. We’ll dance with them and then we’ll go to sleep.”  
  
“What the fuck do you mean,” Alfie calls, “we’ll _dance_ with them?”  
  
  
**  
  
  
What he means is, apparently, that’s he’s going to ruin one song by insisting that he must have a dance with his sister. All three of them look at him quite disapprovingly but he doesn’t care, only perhaps he should pour himself a glass of whiskey. When they dance, Ada looks at him with eyes that are clearly searching for evidence on his face, and he’s trying to hide it, but it won’t go away. _Six months_. Ada sighs and gently squeezes his shoulder, and he realises his steps have slowed down. Jessie and Alfie are watching them. Jessie looks like she doesn’t know what to think, and Tommy doesn’t have a fucking clue what he should think about Alfie’s expression. Maybe Alfie’s mad at him. That’d be good. They could fix that in the bedroom later.  
  
“Fine,” he says when the song is over, “Alfie, dance with me.”  
  
“No,” Alfie says as if he’s been waiting for it, which can’t be the case because Tommy didn’t fucking plan it.  
  
“Yeah,” he says and grabs Alfie’s wrist. “We’re going to take it slow. It’s going to be alright.”  
  
“Tommy, I don’t fucking _dance._ ”  
  
“Dance with me,” he says. The light in the room is soft. It’s his own library. His own house. His sister and her girlfriend are watching. It’s going to be alright. “Dance with _me._ ”  
  
“Why?” Alfie asks, barely audible.  
  
“Because we can,” he says and runs his palms on Alfie’s arms. Alfie just stares at him. The girls are staring at him as well. But he doesn’t mind. “Because we’re together and Ada and Jessie know it and they don’t mind and this is the only fucking place in which we can dance.”  
  
“I hate dancing.”  
  
“No, you don’t.”  
  
“I do. I fucking always did. Never wanted to dance.”  
  
“But with me,” he says, “with _me._ ”  
  
“Tommy,” Alfie says, but he doesn’t sound so grim anymore, and Tommy swallows down a bit more of his whiskey. “I said it because I know you’re going to want to leave. I _know._ I’d leave too if I had a chance. But the fucking thing is in me.”  
  
The library is really quiet. The music has stopped. He walks to the gramophone and resettles the needle. It’s _Bye Bye Blackbird._  
  
“So, how does this work?” Alfie says with a deep sigh. “Can I at least keep my cane? For looks?”  
  
He doesn’t have a fucking idea how it works. Two men trying to dance, they must look ridiculous but Ada and Jessie aren’t laughing. They aren’t even smiling. The song is awfully sad. He grabs Alfie’s coat and arms and shoulders and Alfie grabs his and it feels only slightly more dancing than wrestling. But after a while they find a way to almost dance, or maybe it’s more like walking at the same time, in the same direction, Alfie’s hand stroking the back of his neck. It feels good. Finally Alfie’s knee cracks, and Alfie grimaces and he lets go of the man’s coat. Alfie walks to the chair and sits down, watching him with careful glances as if trying to figure out what the bloody hell he’s going to do next. The girls have left the room and he doesn’t know when.  
  
“I need to get some air,” he says and walks out of the library. Another song starts but the drum solo fades away when he closes the door.  
  
He finds Ada in the drawing room. He lights a cigarette and goes to the window. Ada says something to Jessie, something he can’t quite hear but Jessie leaves the room without saying anything.  
  
“Tommy,” Ada says from the sofa.  
  
He goes to sit next to her and swears he’s not going to talk about this, not now that he’s maybe a little drunk and his head feels heavy and there’s something in his throat he can’t swallow. Maybe later. He smokes his cigarette and Ada doesn’t say anything, and then he tells Ada about the six months. Six _bloody_ months.  
  
Could be more, he tells Ada and Ada strokes his arm as if comforting a child. It seems that he’s sitting closer to Ada now. It could be more than six months. Or it could be less. And Alfie told him to fuck off when he wants to because he can’t bear the end of it, and he can’t. He fucking can’t.  
  
  
**  
  
  
The bedroom is dark and quiet. He closes the door as softly as he can but it’s loud anyway, and then he tries to see. Maybe Alfie didn’t come back here. Maybe Alfie’s in one of the guestrooms, and he doesn’t have a fucking idea whether he should try to find the man or let him be.  
  
“Tommy?”  
  
Fuck. “You’re here.”  
  
“Of course I’m here.”  
  
“I -,” he says and walks to the bed. There’s nothing he could say. “I was in the library. With Ada.”  
  
“Really?” Alfie says. The man’s sitting in Tommy’s bed, already under the duvet. “That’s surprisingly sane of you. I thought you might’ve gone for a ride. In the fucking dark. Would’ve killed yourself and the horse.”  
  
He opens his mouth and then closes it again, and then he starts pulling his clothes off. Alfie doesn’t say anything, not until he has nothing but his pants on.  
  
“You’re an idiot.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says.  
  
“Don’t bloody say that to me,” Alfie says, “don’t say that. Just come here.”  
  
“Are you going to –“  
  
“You can keep your pants. I’m fucking _exhausted._ You made me _dance._ Right in front of your sister and her… her _woman._ ”  
  
“Sorry about –“  
  
“And stop apologising. You made me bloody dance in your library in your house as if this is real. As if we’re real people. No one else in the fucking world would dare.”  
  
“I can’t stand people dying,” he says and sits down in the edge of the bed, “slowly. That doesn’t happen.”  
  
“No,” Alfie says, a few inches away from him but they don’t touch, “because it’s always accidents and guns and war and that kind of stuff for us. You messed it up when you didn’t shoot me.”  
  
He lays down on the mattress. Alfie lays down beside him. “I don’t know what we’re doing.”  
  
“Let’s just sleep,” Alfie says, and there’s a hand on his shoulder. “We can talk about it in the morning. Or never.”  
  
He says Alfie good night. Alfie says the same to him. The hand stays on his shoulder. Whiskey makes his head dull and his dreams mild, only in one dream he’s in that beach with Alfie and he’s trying to shoot the man but he hasn’t have a gun in his hand, not anymore, and his hands are shaking too badly anyway. And Alfie’s telling him to leave anytime he wants to. His face is wet but he’s not even crying, and then he realises it’s the see.  
  
  
**  
  
  
The morning is bright. The sun shines through the windows and onto the bed, and Alfie grunts something about never getting enough sleep but then shuts up when Tommy slides a hand inside his pants and takes him in his hand.  
  
“What the fuck you’re doing?”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“We aren’t going to fuck now, Tommy.”  
  
“And why not?”  
  
“Because I’m bloody tired,” Alfie says, “I slept like crap and thought about how I’m going to die. And you’re trying to get me off.”  
  
“Close your eyes,” he says, and Alfie glares at him but then closes his eyes with a tight smile that seems to say _now what._ It’s a bit difficult to reach Alfie’s face and keep his hand in Alfie’s pants but he manages it. He kisses Alfie on the mouth and Alfie’s eyes open.  
  
“What the –“  
  
“Shut _up,_ ” he says with a slow stroke. A slow stroke and a kiss. That’s what it’s going to be this morning. Maybe he’s trying to apologise or maybe he’s trying to make them both feel better, but whatever the fuck it is, he doesn’t care. He’s going to fucking wank Alfie Solomons until the man comes in his hand and he’s going to keep kissing Alfie as well just so that the man can’t fucking talk all the time. _That’s_ what this is about. But Alfie’s kissing him back, open-mouthed wet kisses that seem somehow hasty and somehow intense as if Alfie’s trying to hold onto him but quickly, quickly before they run out of fucking time.  
  
Later, Alfie’s laying on the bed, chest falling and rising, taking glances at Tommy and reaching for his pants. He wraps his fingers around Alfie’s wrist and keeps Alfie’s hand in place.  
  
“No?”  
  
“Not now,” he says. It’s almost like he’s holding Alfie’s hand. Almost. Also, his own hand is still sticky but Alfie doesn’t say anything about that.  
  
They go for breakfast. The maid tells him that Mrs. Thorne and her guest are still in their room, and he tells her to ask them if they want to have coffee or tea there. She looks a little confused but nods anyway, and he catches Alfie’s glance over the table.  
  
“It’s like the two of us dancing in the library, you know,” Alfie says. “Two women in one bedroom, and you asked the maid to take them tea. I bet there’s only one bed in that room.”  
  
“It’s my bloody house.”  
  
“It’s your bloody world,” Alfie says. It’s certainly a joke, only Alfie sounds like he’s hiding a smile in his beard.  
  
  
**  
  
  
He finds Ada in the library a bit before midday. She has lipstick but her hair looks like someone just had their hands in it.  
  
“Hi,” he says and closes the door.  
  
Ada sets aside the book she was reading when he came in. “Did you talk to him last night?”  
  
“Where’s Jessie?”  
  
“Taking a bath,” Ada says and shrugs, “didn’t want company.”  
  
“Odd,” he says, sits down next to her and lights a cigarette. “We only talked a little. I don’t know how to talk about it.”  
  
“But you told him that you’re fucking terrified.”  
  
“I think I did.”  
  
“That’s good enough,” Ada says, “for now. Listen, I wanted to tell you something.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I’m glad you did this. This dinner. And I’m so glad you called him your boyfriend right in front of our faces.”  
  
“I didn’t mean to.”  
  
“It’s just, when you do something like that, no one can say a word about it. Because you are you. But when I do it, they’re going to try. Or they’re going to think about trying. But now it’s like… you already kind of told us that it’s alright.”  
  
He takes a deep breath and lights a cigarette. “Do you think you’re in love with her?”  
  
“In love?” Ada says, biting her teeth into her lower lip. But she sounds a bit amused. “Sure. Sometimes I think that definitely. And sometimes I think it’s just a crush. You want me to ask you the same?”  
  
He shakes his head.  
  
“Fine,” Ada says, stands up and pats him on the shoulder. “I bet you left him playing with Charlie or something like that. Go to him. Maybe you’re in love with him. And, you know, it’s terrible that he’s going to die. But six months, Tommy. It’s a long time.”  
  
“It’s a fucking short time.”  
  
“But how many days you could fit into six months,” Ada says, “how many hours? How many minutes? Also, please make him dance again. He looked so uncomfortable.”  
  
“He hated it.”  
  
“No, he didn’t. He was stroking your neck.”  
  
“He likes my neck,” he says and realises he’s smiling a little. Ada rolls her eyes and then goes.  
  
  
**  
  
  
It sure feels like a relationship. He doesn’t _think_ about Alfie as his boyfriend, at least not very seriously unless he’s quite drunk. But that’s probably what it is. And now his family knows, and every servant in his house knows, and if he and Alfie have six months left, he’s pretty damn sure that quite a few people in Birmingham and London will know. Tommy Shelby and Alfie Solomons, in a relationship. Or fucking. Fucking but with feelings. Many feelings, most of which are quite tender to be honest.  
  
Sometimes he thinks he’s rubbing it in people’s faces on purpose. Maybe he wants them to ask. But no one asks. The day after the family dinner, Alfie spends half a day in his house in Warwickshire and then goes back to London. He stays behind for a whole day and tries to concentrate on the business but it doesn’t quite work out. The next evening, he drives to London and knocks on Alfie’s door. Alfie stares at him as if he’s not surprised at all.  
  
“Aren’t you going to let me in?” Tommy asks when Alfie just keeps staring at him.  
  
“I was kind of waiting for you, you know,” Alfie says. “I was a little bored.”  
  
“Just let me in.”  
  
Alfie steps aside from the doorway. “I don’t really mind that you came.”  
  
“Don’t you.”  
  
“The thing about you,” Alfie says, closes the door behind them and follows him to the living room, “is that you’re never boring. So I’ve grown used to that. Fucking inconvenient.”  
  
“I’m here now,” he says, sits down in the armchair by the window and lights a cigarette.  
  
“Good.”  
  
“Good,” he says back at Alfie, who sits down in the armchair next to his and starts rambling about something Ollie did this morning, something awfully stupid, but he can’t quite get a grip of what it actually was. Maybe Alfie’s just talking. Better that than to be quiet. In some point of it, he drags the armchair a bit closer and Alfie doesn’t say a word about that, nor about when Tommy places his left palm on Alfie’s good knee and lets it rest there. This is nice. He’d forgotten how much he likes _nice_ once in a while _._  
  
He stays in London for two whole days. They go to places, he and Alfie. They go to a restaurant for dinner and then to a pub for a few drinks and he’s pretty sure everyone knows who they are. Certainly they know, because no one says a fucking word when he rests his hand on Alfie’s arm and strokes him with his thumb in a gesture that’s so subtle, almost not happening at all, and still a few boys in the corner try hard not to stare at them. Alfie just keeps watching him with an amused smile. When they’re ready to go home and his head feels light because of the beer, he thinks that perhaps this is the best part of everything he did. Not the money, no. _This._ He’s done enough to get himself hanged for it, so why should he fucking care if the whole London knows he’s in love with Alfie Solomons.  
  
_No._ Fuck. He’s not _in love_ , he’s…  
  
“You’re pale,” Alfie says, watching him from the other side of the table. Their shoes are brushed against each other under it, have been for a while. “I mean, you always are. But what did you do now, swallow a fly?”  
  
He places his hand on Alfie’s on the table. Fuck the rest of them. Alfie’s hand is warm and very still.  
  
“Tommy,” Alfie says quietly enough that only he can hear it.  
  
He runs his fingers on Alfie’s knuckles. “We aren’t going to get arrested from this.”  
  
“No,” Alfie says, frowning, “but –“  
  
He grabs Alfie’s hand, properly this time. Okay, he’s not going to wonder if he’s in love or not. That’s just depressing. And who fucking cares anyway. They’re fucking, he and Alfie, they’re in a relationship if you want to look it like that. Maybe he’s in love but this whole thing is bad enough as it is. He doesn’t need to think about _love._  
  
“Okay,” Alfie says and pulls his hand away, and for a second Tommy thinks about asking why. They’re the only two fucking people in London who can do this and give a fuck about someone telling the cops. Let the fuckers see that they’re in love -  
  
_Shit._  
  
Let the fuckers see that they’re into each other.  
  
“Tommy,” Alfie says, standing beside Tommy’s chair, his palm resting on Tommy’s shoulder, “let’s go home. I want to get to bed.”  
  
He opens his mouth, but Alfie raises his hand onto his neck, brushes his fingertips against the skin above Tommy’s collar. Everyone in the pub is pointedly not looking at them.  
  
“Bed?” he says and stands up.  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says, keeping his palm pressed against Tommy’s back for a few seconds.  
  
It’s cold outside in the street. They walk close enough that Alfie’s arm keeps brushing against Tommy’s. But they aren’t holding hands or anything like that. Someone could mistake them for two men who just happen to walk close to each other.  
  
“That’s a nice thing you’re doing,” Alfie says when they’re almost at home. Alfie’s home. Not Tommy’s.  
  
“What?”  
  
“A bit unnecessary,” Alfie says, glancing at him, “but nice. I’ve been like this my whole life. I’m used to hiding it.”  
  
“I didn’t realise you were hiding it. Didn’t seem that way when you told me to let you fuck me.”  
  
Alfie’s gaze is too careful, too tender. “I bet not. But, you know, it’s something you can shout at someone’s face if you’re, like, an old bastard who can get anyone killed. Or if someone’s already pointing a gun at you like you were in that beach. But you can’t really be _nice_ about someone in front of their faces. You can’t be tender.”  
  
He takes a few faster steps. Alfie’s fingertips certainly were tender, brushing against the back of his neck in the pub.  
  
“Except that apparently you can,” Alfie says, _“you_ can. Thomas fucking Shelby. Maybe I should begin worrying that you’re going to kiss me in front of the bloody cops one day.”  
  
“I might,” Tommy says. Suddenly he feels warmer.  
  
“You might.”  
  
“But I won’t if you don’t want that.”  
  
“What you get from being in love with another man,” Alfie says, and it sounds so _odd_ said just like that, in the quiet street of the late evening in London, “is maybe five years of jail. Something like that. You know bloody well that I’m not worried.”  
  
“I didn’t mean _that._ ”  
  
“I know what you meant,” Alfie says, and it sounds almost like _I wouldn’t mind you kissing me in public._ “Let’s just go home. You’re going to have tea and then I’m going to fucking undress you so slowly that you’re going to swear at me, and probably threaten me as well. All kinds of pointless insults. I wonder what you’re going to say this time, maybe that you’ll kill me if I don’t do it faster.”  
  
“Do what faster?” Of course he shouldn’t ask. He just can’t help it. But Alfie only smiles at him.  
  
“Surely you know by now. It’s not like I have so many tricks.”  
  
“I just like to hear you talk about it.”  
  
“I might’ve learned more,” Alfie says, perfectly casual now, “if it hadn’t always been, like, one rushed night, two rushed nights, and then somebody else.”  
  
“I like your tricks just fine.”  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says and glances at him, “it’s just, I never thought that someone like you –“  
  
“Alfie.”  
  
“I’m just saying, I wouldn’t mind if I had a million tricks for you.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“Too much?”  
  
“No,” he says and takes a deep breath. Maybe he means it. “No, not really. Just, your tricks are quite alright.”  
  
“I like watching you,” Alfie says quietly, “you know that. You always try to look like you don’t care, you bloody idiot, like you’re a bit bored but let me fuck you anyway, and then in some point it just falls away from your face.”  
  
Tommy lights a cigarette and tries to focus on that. They’re almost at Alfie’s place now, five more minutes and then they can take this nonsense inside. They’re probably going to kiss first.  
  
“And then in the end of it you look at me like you don’t have a fucking clue what I’m doing to you,” Alfie says, and the bastard sounds a bit breathless now, “I want that.”  
  
“Just wait for a few minutes. We aren’t going to do it in the street.”  
  
He’s quite sure that Alfie’s trying to look disapproving, but he’s not really watching. Later, he wonders if he really does that. All the lights are out, he’s lying on his back on Alfie’s bed and he’s quite certain he’s not trying to look like he doesn’t care. And then he catches Alfie’s eyes and Alfie’s fucking _smiling_ at him. He tells Alfie to stop that and Alfie’s smile grows bolder and his fingers do as well.  
  
The next morning, they eat breakfast together and take turns reading the newspaper. He says that he wants to meet Alfie’s doctor. Alfie glances at him with a look that clearly says _fuck no._ But he tells Alfie to fuck off, he’s going to see that doctor. Maybe the man’s not even good. Alfie tells him that he can choose his own fucking doctor just fine, thank you very much, and Tommy can go to hell. He says that they are together now, aren’t they, and isn’t this just the kind of thing people do when they’re together. That shuts Alfie’s mouth for at least twenty seconds.  
  
But they are, aren’t they? They are together. Next time he sees Ada, she asks him how his boyfriend is and he says _fine_ without thinking. Ada laughs. He frowns at her and lights a cigarette. Then Ada asks about the business, but he’s not been thinking about business that much, not really. It’s almost as if everything’s finally going well enough, for a while at least. There’s no war to fight, not in Birmingham, not in London, not in France, only a tiny little war in bedroom some nights when for some bloody reason he just can’t go to Alfie without making a fuss out of it first. Maybe it’s just that sometimes his head is full of ghosts and he needs Alfie to fucking make him stop listening to them. Or maybe it’s just that he’s lost too much of himself already and can’t do the nice and the tender and the kind all the time. But Alfie sees straight through him. It’s good. They’re fine.  
  
If only they weren’t running out of time.


End file.
